


Lucrete

by ndnickerson



Series: Red Label [7]
Category: Nancy Drew - Keene
Genre: Explicit Sexual Content, F/M, Handcuffs, Peril, Resolved Sexual Tension, Serial Killer, Unresolved Sexual Tension
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-12-19
Updated: 2009-12-19
Packaged: 2017-10-04 15:39:05
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 5
Words: 38,418
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/31823
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ndnickerson/pseuds/ndnickerson
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Chicago Police Detective Ned Nickerson is assigned to the task force tracking down a serial killer.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Potentially disturbing scenes of rape, violence, and murder; adult language.

"Hey Nancy!"

Nancy pushed her sunglasses up onto her hair as she maneuvered in stiletto heels through the bullpen. All around her were the sounds of the other officers, typing with two fingers, sipping from lukewarm mugs of hours-old coffee, briskly questioning callers. She found the bustle of it all invigorating, after the drone of cubicles, the only sight from the door of her cramped office.

Ned's home away from home.

"Hey Bill," Nancy greeted Ned's usual partner, smiling as she caught the welcoming gleam in his eye.

"Did Nickerson not check in with you?"

Nancy found Ned's desk, empty, and slipped into his chair, sweeping up a pencil to tap with her nervous fingers. "I just wanted to surprise him for lunch," she said. "Why, he out on a call?"

Bill shook his head, tipping his shoulder in the direction of a glass conference room. Nancy peered through the panes, but the hanging blinds blocked her view.

"Big meeting."

Nancy raised an eyebrow. "Bad?"

Bill shrugged. Sandy hair, a nose that had been broken too many times, large hands and thick knuckles. He was intimidating enough all by himself, and even though he had twenty pounds on Ned, all of it was muscle. "I think we had the bad luck to pick up the wrong missing persons case."

"So why aren't you in there with him, instead of out here flirting with me?" Their engagement picture was on the desk. Ned's arms wrapped around her from behind, matching smiles. Nancy slipped the diamond back and forth on her finger.

"Just have a case to finish up before I can get on the task force. Maybe get a little face time."

"Task force?" Nancy's head shot up, her blue eyes wide. "Ned got drafted to a task force?"

"Wrong file on the wrong desk," Bill shrugged. "Trust me, I'm as in the dark as you are."

"I doubt that," Nancy said, then turned around when she heard the conference room's door open. The officers emerged in twos and threes, their faces grave, their voices low, and Nancy was almost convinced Bill had been teasing her in an attempt to stall her for a while before she saw Ned, at the back of the group, talking to his captain. After a reluctant nod from the latter, Ned started toward his desk, rocking back on his heels when he caught sight of Nancy.

"You smelled blood in the water?" Ned smiled to soften his words, wrapping his arms around her shoulders, dropping a kiss on the crown of her head. "Want to go out and get some lunch?"

"Sure," she said, lacing her fingers between his. She swept her purse up on her other shoulder and blew Bill a kiss. "Guess we'll just have to reschedule," she said.

Bill sat back in his chair, lacing his fingers over his belly, smiling. "Always, doll," he called back.

Ned's face turned serious as they passed Bill's desk. "If you can finish up the paperwork in the next hour, I'll fill you in on what we're doing."

Bill nodded. "I'm on it. But it's yours next time."

Nancy and the secretary exchanged smiles before Nancy pulled her fiancé out on the street, into a summer afternoon so still it buzzed, the air motionless around them. "Where to?"

Ned glanced at his watch. "Thirty minutes," he told her. "Sorry. Can't spare any more."

Nancy nodded, reaching up to press a kiss against his cheek. She smoothed her thumb over the furrow in his brow. "Thirty minutes," she agreed. "You want to talk about it?"

He shook his head, a tight, humorless grin brief on his face. "Not if we're eating," he said.

\--

"You would have been sixteen that summer."

His voice was low. He had been quiet through dinner, distracted, an hour later than usual, keying himself in to surprise her just as she put the last dish on the table.

Nancy glanced at the television, thumbed the remote to lower the volume, pulled her legs up underneath her and gazed at him expectantly. "When we had been dating for a year."

The ghost of a smile crossed his face. "There was a girl," he said. "Student at UC. They found her in the river. She had her throat cut. Raped."

Nancy looked down. "In the city."

Ned nodded. "In the city. They thought it was an isolated incident. The water had washed away the trace evidence, there was nothing on her, nothing to connect her to anyone else. The next summer, they found another girl. Just one. Just when it was getting warm. Another college student."

Nancy took a sharp breath. "Serial killer?"

Ned nodded again. "Either he skipped a year in there, or we haven't found the body yet. I had another missing persons case cross my desk, and when we found her..."

Nancy sighed and ran her hands through her hair. "But you don't work homicide."

"I don't," he said. "But this task force will look good for me, and... God, I was there when we found her. When they found her. I want to catch this guy."

Nancy rested her palm on his cheek. "So I guess what you're saying is, I'm not going to be seeing a lot of you until that happens."

The corner of Ned's mouth quirked up in a smile. "Sound familiar?"

"A little," she teased him, leaning forward to give him a kiss. "Well, I'm not a college student, so I'm safe."

Ned shrugged. "Actually, two of them were graduate students, and you're around the same age. So you see anybody following you, you give me a call."

Nancy flipped the television off and took him by the hand, leading him toward her bedroom. "I thought you said you found a body a year. What makes you think he's stepping it up?"

Ned shrugged. "Maybe he isn't," he said, pulling his shirt over his head and kicking his shoes off. "It'll be hell to catch him. Half the guys on the task force are praying that this is it, that he'll just stop, and next summer we'll just wait and see."

"But that's not what you want to do."

Ned shook his head, slipping into bed with her. "One more girl is one too many," he said, leaning over to kiss her. "Even if that girl isn't you."

\--

While Ned was in the shower the next morning, Nancy saw the files he had brought home with him. She tried to concentrate on breakfast, toast and scrambled eggs, but when Ned wandered into the kitchen in a towel, the eggs were on the verge of burning and the toast already cool, and the files were spread open in front of her.

Nancy swept her hair back and looked up at Ned as he served himself a plate and sat down across from her. For a few seconds her gaze traced the few errant beads of moisture on his shoulders, sliding over his chest. He lifted his face to gaze at her questioningly, and Nancy cleared her throat, forcing herself to concentrate.

"So he has a signature."

Ned swallowed a forkful of eggs before he nodded. "He sedates them, but he poisons them before he kills them. The ME says it's a fatal dose, every time, that they're probably on the verge of death when he slits their throats." Ned took a sip of his coffee and looked down at his plate, made a face, and pushed it away.

"Poison."

Ned ran a hand through his hair. "It's unusual for a male serial killer to poison his victims. He's not a mercy killer, not some angel of death. We can't make a specific profile for him or his victims. Caucasian females between eighteen and twenty-five, and he's white, twenty-four to thirty-two, and organized. That's all we know."

Nancy sighed and unfolded herself, pausing to hide the crime scene photos and diagrams from sight before she served herself a plate. "Well," she said, sliding her arms around him from behind and resting her chin on the crown of his head, "I'm here, if you need a sounding board."

Ned slipped his arm around her shoulders and squeezed her briefly. "I'm counting on it," he said, exaggerated gravity in his voice. "Keep that beautiful mind available for me."

"Why stop there," Nancy said, kissing his cheek, "when you can have the rest of me too."

Ned growled something under his breath before returning the kiss. "If I had any overtime to use right now, you can bet I'd take you up on that."

\--

Nancy was staring at the curtains when George snapped her fingers in front of her face. "What?" Nancy mumbled, then gave George an apologetic smile. "Sorry."

"I know that look," George said, settling back. "You have a case."

Nancy half-smiled and swirled her soup around with her spoon before responding. "Actually, Ned has a case."

George chuckled. "Let me repeat, you have a case. I don't see why you don't just give up and admit it, Nan."

"Because I have a job," Nancy protested weakly. "A job that is fulfilling and challenging during the three days a month I'm investigating anything."

"Exactly," George said, grabbing another breadstick. "Heard from Bess yesterday."

Nancy perked up. "How's she doing?"

"Okay," George said. "She sent me a postcard from Germany, if you can believe that."

Nancy half-smiled and shook her head. "Germany," she said softly. "You don't like him, do you."

George took a long sip of her water before answering. "She's done better," she said. "But she loves him. And maybe this trip'll be good for her."

"Better be," Nancy said. "I just can't imagine it, just dropping everything and running away like that."

"Not even with Ned?"

Nancy smiled. "He's different," she said softly. "Maybe I should have said I can't imagine running off with Johnny like that. Although you have to admit, it's not possible for a guy to look much hotter with his shirt off."

George picked up her straw paper and threw it at Nancy. "Careful, or Ned'll be calling off the engagement."

Nancy clenched her fist behind her diamond. "Never," she said.

\--

Ned was just cleaning off his desk before going to lunch when Bill's phone rang. Ned glanced up, noticing the way Bill's face drained, the grim tone before he hung up.

"They found another one."

Nancy had once joked that nothing could ever kill Ned's appetite, but the sight of the girl made him sick. The water had washed the blood from her throat, her hair trailing in wet dark ropes over the rocks, her limbs pale and sodden. She hadn't even been in the water long enough to be reported missing, only long enough for her parents to think she had been out with a girlfriend or a date. The medical examiner was already on the scene, another six cops looking for evidence.

Ned knelt beside the body, while he and his partner waited for the lead detective on the case to show, and glanced at the ME. "Same as the others?"

The ME nodded. "After the tox screen I can tell you for sure, but everything else looks the same. No jewelry, signs of sexual trauma, marks at the wrists and ankles. I'll make sure you get a copy of the report."

"Hey, here he comes."

Ned looked up at Bill, who was shielding his eyes, looking back toward the road. Detective McIntyre was approaching. Tall, grizzled, with pale grey eyes, his mouth already drawn down in a frown. "It's him?"

Ned and the ME both nodded. "She looks like she was dressed to go out."

"Have an ID yet?"

One of the patrol cops stepped forward, and flipped open his notebook. "Rachel Morrow, she's a student at UC. We're trying to reach her parents."

"Where was she last night? Where did this happen?"

Ned shook his head. "We'll start the canvas," he said.

No one answered at Rachel's dorm room. Ned looked over the whiteboard hanging from the door. Rachel's name in all caps, decorated with the outlines of daisies. A phone number had been scrawled under her roommate's name, but Rachel's side of the board was empty. Ned left his card tacked to the strip of cork at the top of the board, and followed Bill back down to their patrol car.

"One girl a year."

"Maybe," Bill reminded him. "Maybe we just haven't found the others."

Ned ran his hand through his hair. "Let's go to the dean's office."

\--

"Rachel's-- was a history major," the secretary said, flipping through her file. "I didn't know her too well. Her advisor just left for vacation, although from the notes in her file, she only went to see him for advising."

"Is that unusual?" Ned asked.

"Not for a girl with her GPA." The secretary pushed her chair back and walked over to the copy machine. "I'll make you a copy of her transcript. She was doing okay. A lot of Bs, a few high Cs."

Ned thought for a minute, then reached into his portfolio and pulled out another list. "How far back do your transcripts go?"

The secretary shrugged. "We're all electronic now, so I can go about ten years back. Need someone else's?"

Ned looked over the list of names. "I seem to be missing one, from three years ago. Paula Forbes."

The secretary ran out another sheet. "Anything else I can do for you? Sorry, graduation is soon, so it's a little hectic around here."

Ned nodded. "You have a direct line here, in case we have any more questions?"

Bill flipped his notebook shut as the two of them walked out. "You think he's around here?"

Ned shrugged. "Almost every year, at the end of classes." He looked over the two transcripts in his portfolio. "I'm sure a lot of teachers have been here that long."

"A teacher would do this?"

"Honestly..." Ned sighed. "I can't imagine anyone who would do this. I've met a lot of criminals, but this."

Bill nodded. "You and Nancy never tracked down any serial killers?"

"Not like this." Ned chuckled as he slipped into the car beside his partner. "River Heights may be a hotbed for white-collar crime, but Nancy managed to avoid pulling any of those cases. Not that her father would have let her." Ned glanced at his watch. "Speaking of Carson, I get to have dinner with him tomorrow."

Bill shook his head. "So your future father-in-law is the top criminal defense attorney in the state. I don't envy you."

Ned smiled. "Hey, if I ever get arrested, he's the one I want defending me. Again."

Bill snickered. "All right. Want to try the roommate again?"

\--

"Cops?" Michelle shrugged her bookbag to her bunk bed and looked down at the card she had pulled off her door. "What's wrong?"

Ned tucked his portfolio under his arm. "When was the last time you saw you roommate?"

Michelle glanced at the other bed. "I don't know," she said faintly. "She had something to do for class, and then she was going out. She just split up with her boyfriend, so." Michelle shrugged. "She okay?"

Ned looked down. "We found her this morning, in the river," he said. "We need to know where she was last night."

Michelle sat down heavily. "In the river?" When she looked up, her eyes were gleaming with tears. "What happened to her? I mean, she goes out for drinks, sometimes, did she... lose her... what happened."

Ned looked over at Bill. "We're not sure yet," Bill said gently. "Maybe it was somebody she knew. Do you have the name of her boyfriend? Maybe his number?"

"Yeah," Michelle said, rubbing at her eyes. "Yeah. Somewhere." She started digging through the papers on her desk, then sat down in her chair, her hands trembling. "But he, wouldn't..."

"Maybe he didn't, but maybe he saw her last night," Ned said gently. "Whose idea was it to break up?"

"His," Michelle said. She dug her cell phone out of her backpack. "Here's his cell phone number. Everything's just so strange now, with exams..."

Bill took down the number. "Anything else you can tell us about him?"

Michelle ran her hand through her hair, then nervously started twisting a ring around her index finger. "He might be over at Omega Chi," she said. "If he hasn't already moved out."

"He won't have," Ned said, half under his breath. He looked down at Michelle's hands. "Michelle, did Rachel wear any rings? Necklaces?"

"Usually. A star necklace and some little silver ring. I think. I remember it fit my thumb." Michelle smiled sadly.

Ned eased back. "Do you mind if we call you again, if we have any more questions?"

"Yeah," Michelle murmured. "Yeah. Call me on my cell, it's... my parents, I'll probably be staying with them over the summer. On the other side of Chicago."

Ned nodded. "Thanks. I'm sorry."

Michelle looked up. "You gonna catch this guy?"

\--

Ned took the frat house, while Bill said they would catch up with each other downtown, near the clubs Michelle said Rachel had liked. Once he had pulled up in the circle, Ned looked down at the transcript again. Rachel had been taking a full load that semester, all her grades incomplete. He brought out Paula Forbes's transcript, and noted the same list of notations, an eternal line of IPs. An incomplete life.

Peter Donovan was in the basement, circling the pool table to line up his next shot, when one of the brothers directed Ned down. The other guy took in Ned's suit, tie, and the leather portfolio under his arm, and shoved a can of something back into the shadows before he stepped back into the halo of light on the table.

"Donovan?"

"Yeah," Peter said, leaning away from the table. "Cop or lawyer?"

"Cop," Ned confessed, extending his hand. "And an Omega Chi. Just need to ask you a few questions about your exgirlfriend."

Peter had been nervously tapping his stick against the table. Now he stilled it. "Which one?"

"Rachel Morrow."

"Is she okay?"

Ned shook his head slowly. "Maybe we should speak about this privately."

The other boy directed a thinly veiled glance at what Ned was sure was his abandoned beer can before heading back up the stairs, and Peter bounced the pool stick between his cupped palms, looking away from him. "So she's pregnant."

Ned shook his head again. "We found her this morning. She was in the river. We're trying to retrace her movements from last night... did you happen to see her?"

Peter leaned forward, his eyes wide, resting his weight on the heels of his hands. "I did see her last night," he sighed. "It was one of those things, I walk into a club and she's there. That was all. She glared at me, I backed off, didn't see her again. What happened to her?"

"She was attacked."

Peter exhaled explosively. "Anything I can do," he said. "I mean, we didn't-- we weren't seeing each other, but I didn't want anything like that to happen to her."

Bill was just ducking out of the next club up the street when Ned pulled up. "I can't stand much more of this heat," Bill said, ducking into the car. "And we're going to have to come back later, anyway. No one's around yet."

Ned nodded. "Maybe we can go see if the ME has faxed in the report. Her ex ran into her last night at that club," he said, pointing in front of them. "So we'll hit that one. Maybe if we're lucky..."

Bill shook his head. "You been to the club lately? Could you manage a composite of a single person you saw in there?"

"Besides Nancy?" Ned cranked the engine and pulled out into traffic. "No. I can barely remember what she made for dinner last night."

\--

"No necklace," the ME reported, gesturing at the body. "No rings. Everything matches. Slashed from left to right, no fluids recovered. Marks on her wrists and ankles made from what look like standard issue handcuffs."

Ned looked down at the body. Bill and McIntyre hung back, as did a few other officers from the task force. The morgue was crowded, and Ned almost wished he'd waited for the report to just be faxed to him, instead of coming down in person. Wasting time until he could swing by the club and then go home to Nancy was grating on his nerves.

"Any idea on where she was killed?"

Ned and Bill exchanged a glance. "We think we know where she was snatched from. It's a few blocks away from the college."

"We found some blood, up the river," another cop volunteered. "Probably near the initial dump site."

"But we don't know where she was killed."

The ME shrugged in frustration. "All fiber and trace evidence was washed away."

Back at the station house, Ned slipped his hands into his pockets, pacing in the conference room. Photos of the two corpses were already tacked up on the bulletin board, eight names written in varying hands on the whiteboard. Ned shuffled through the rest of the crime scene photographs, while Bill looked on, chewing on the end of his pen.

"The boyfriend's a dead end. He had to have been thirteen when this started."

Bill shrugged. "But this is the first time we've ever found two of his bodies in one year. Maybe the boyfriend saw the report, decided to get rid of his exgirlfriend. Maybe she was pregnant, he couldn't take it..."

Ned shook his head. "I asked the ME, no dice," he said. "Besides, if this was just a copycat, we wouldn't have found poison in her system."

"Fine," Bill sighed. He looked again at the whiteboard. "Maybe he was just making it even. Eight years, seven murders. Rachel makes eight. Maybe now he's done again, and we have another year to find him."

Ned ran his hand through his hair. "Do you honestly believe that," he said softly.

Bill's face fell. "No," he admitted. "I don't. I wish I could."

Ned looked at the papers spread over the conference table, and looked in his folder. "We have to be missing something," he said. "We have to be."

Bill walked over to the whiteboard. "All students," he said. "All girls. All white. All killed between May 2 and May 15. All sedated, restrained, poisoned, raped, throats slit. All dumped in the river. All their jewelry stolen, not recovered."

"Different hair colors, eye colors, heights. Different majors... well, to be honest, Marissa and Liz were both English majors, and Danielle was a history TA, and Rachel was an undergrad history major, but girls aren't very highly represented in any of the other majors, anyway."

Bill nodded. "Is it fair to say they represent a cross-section?"

Ned nodded. "They didn't know each other," he said. "Middle to good students, undergrad and graduate..."

Singleton poked his head into the doorway of the conference room. "We might have found an eyewitness to the dump."

Ned swept his coat off the back of a chair and hurried out, Bill on his heels. "Brought him in for interview?"

Singleton nodded. "On the way," he said.

\--

Ned was comfortable in the club. Usually he was in jeans and had Nancy on his arm, though. Tonight he was in a button-down with the sleeves rolled up to his forearms, charcoal grey slacks, and leather shoes, and Nancy was nowhere in sight.

Ramirez, one of the female members on the task force, was asking around with a photo of Rachel, another of Lindsay. Ned walked up to the bar and slipped his own copies of the pictures out of his pocket.

"Seen either of these girls?"

The bartender peered down at the photos, then shook his head. "Don't think so," he said. "But everything kinda blurs into drink orders and tips. Getting anything?"

Ned shook his head, even though the bottle of scotch managed to hold his gaze. "Did you work this weekend, or yesterday night?"

The bartender shook his head. "You want Brad. If you talk to the manager..."

A few hours later Ned loitered on the corner, waiting. Bill walked up, shuffling his feet, his hands jammed into his pockets; Ramirez trailed behind him.

"Any luck?"

"I found someone who remembered her," Bill said. "But that was as far as it went."

Ramirez smiled. "I found someone who got a better look," she said. "Tomorrow morning, if we're lucky, we'll have a halfway decent sketch."

Ned looked down at his watch, his heart falling when he saw the time. Nancy would be asleep already. "Let's call it a night," he said. "Get a fresh start. Good going, Ramirez."

\--

Nancy woke to the feel of wet tongue on her face a full two minutes before her alarm was set to go off. She rolled over, away from the intrusion, and when the mattress dipped and the tongue returned, she raised a palm and gently cupped the furry jaw, shoving it to the side before she opened her eyes. "Hey baby," she said sleepily, before reaching over to turn off her alarm.

Mollie barked, jumping down to the floor and wagging her tail.

Nancy sighed. "Daddy not come home last night?"

Mollie barked again and made a tight circle before looking expectantly at Nancy again.

"All right, all right," Nancy managed, sliding off the bed and kneeling on the floor, petting Mollie, who was overwhelmed with joy at the attention.

Officially, Mollie belonged to Ned, who had found her at a crime scene, fallen in love with her, and adopted her. She was a chocolate lab, still young, her eyes bright, her energy boundless. But because Ned, officially, still lived in an apartment in the city, and Nancy was the one with the house in the suburbs, Ned had spent a weekend installing a secure pet door, and then Mollie was hers.

"You want to go for a run?"

Mollie went into a paroxysm of bliss at the words, her claws clacking against the hardwood floor.

After Nancy brushed her teeth, she took the leash out of Mollie's mouth and sandwiched the phone between her ear and shoulder as she clipped the lead to the collar. "Ned?"

"Hey," he said. "Sorry. By the time I actually got to bed last night it was easier to sleep in the crib than come home and wake you."

"Your girls miss you," she chided him lightly. "Her tongue isn't the one I like to wake up to in the morning."

Ned chuckled under his breath. "Glad to hear it."

"You okay?"

"I'll be okay," he said. "I'll call you later."

Nancy nodded. "Love you."

"Love you."

Mollie scrambled down the front stairs and bounded out into the yard, and Nancy followed, laughing, her feet still cold in her tennis shoes. Mollie had access to the fenced in back yard all day, but it wasn't the same, and she had grown accustomed to morning runs, whether or not Ned was there. Although more often that not, he was, and most of the time Nancy came along.

"What do you think about coffee?" Nancy called down to the dog, matching their strides. "Maybe then I'll have as much energy as you."

After their run and a brief shower, Nancy searched the closet for one of Ned's suits. Despite their best efforts, her father's cursory glance over the movie collection or the master bedroom would have told him immediately that Nancy wasn't living alone. For Ned's benefit Nancy kept the cupboards stocked for midnight snacks and the oversized puppy in the backyard. That, and a drawer in her dresser full of rather brief, purely decorative nightgowns. She found an entire suit, tie, pressed shirt, socks and shoes kept carefully behind closed doors to prevent Mollie's exploration. She grabbed a bottle of his aftershave and shoved that into the bag as well, snapped a slice of bread down in the toaster, and turned to Mollie, who was sprawled across the green sectional, an oversized white plastic bone in her mouth.

"You gonna be good today?" Nancy rubbed her palm over Mollie's head in a few soft strokes. "I'll be back later and take you for another run, okay?"

Mollie barked, returning to her bone when Nancy went back into the kitchen. Mollie brought her the bone and dropped it at her feet, then panted expectantly.

"Once," Nancy said, mock-sternly, walked to the back door and opened it, and tossed the bone for the fence. Mollie bounded after it and Nancy closed the door behind her, making sure the pet door would let the dog back in before she swept up the duffel and the slice of toast and headed out. Mollie managed to make it back in before Nancy closed the front door, and Nancy gave Mollie another pat before she locked the door behind her.

Ned's precinct was on the way to work, but before she reached it she drove through a coffee shop. Two venti lattes and blueberry muffins and she swept in, searching the room for any sign of Ned.

"Hey beautiful."

Nancy turned around on her heels and graced Bill with a smile. "You sleep in the crib last night too?"

"What you trying to say?" Bill stood, giving him a few inches on Nancy, and scanned over her head. "Nickerson!"

Nancy reached into her bag for the muffin and put the coffee on his desk, beside the already lukewarm mug, as he approached. "Thought you might want something."

"God, you're a lifesaver," Ned said, reaching down to give her a kiss. "What's that?"

Nancy let the duffel slide down her shoulder. "Clean suit. Just in case. And it's my favorite."

Ned wrapped his arm around Nancy and took his first sip of the coffee, his eyes closing in bliss. "This is why you need to get married," he told his partner.

"She's not even your wife," Bill protested. "Plus, I don't see anything for me."

Nancy reached around Ned's back and crinkled the bag securely around the other muffin, then lobbed it at him. He snatched it out of the air and peered inside. "Hey, thanks."

Nancy smiled, then reached up to draw Ned down to her for another kiss. "Have to go," she said briefly.

"Yeah," Ned said apologetically, kissing her again. When they pulled apart again, Nancy wiped his lower lip with her thumb, pressing her lips together to reapply her lipstick. "I'll call you."

Nancy nodded and walked over to Bill, who had already wolfed down half his muffin. "Send him home on time tonight," she told him, nodding in Ned's direction.

"What'll you do if I don't?" Bill shot back, wiggling his eyebrows.

"Bring Mollie up here and let her lick you to death." She looked back at Ned. "Don't forget we're going over to Dad's for dinner."

Ned bowed his head in response. "I'll call you," he promised again.

She gave him a slow smile before she sauntered out, the clack of her heels swallowed by the din of the bullpen.

Once she was out of their sight, Ned and Bill turned back to see McIntyre standing beside their desks, his hands in his pockets. "We have a preliminary rough sketch," he said.

Ned and Bill immediately stood. "Might match the boyfriend," Ned said.

"Not if you're right," Bill said.

\--

After two hours and four eyewitnesses, the composite sketch revealed a man, high forehead, weak jaw, with wide-set eyes and close-cropped hair. The artist was putting the data into the computer when Ned looked over her shoulder.

One of the other cops on the task force came in with a report. "Seen McIntyre around?"

Bill looked over his shoulder. "Checked the conference room?"

The cop nodded. "Not there. Nickerson?"

Ned shrugged. "What's your report?"

The other cop looked down. "Processed the potential dump site," he said. "Finished canvassing the clubs. That the sketch?"

Ned nodded, the corner of his mouth curving up. "So we get to hit all the clubs again."

The captain poked his head in. "McIntyre's tracking down a lead. The commissioner's called for a press conference, now that we have a sketch."

Ned's face was incredulous. "Seriously? We were going to canvas again with it, see if we got any more hits."

The captain shrugged. "This way, we get a lot more publicity," he said. "Nickerson, got your uniform?"

Ned nodded. "At my apartment," he said. "If you give me twenty minutes and a siren."

The captain nodded. "You and Stott, I want you with me at the conference."

Ned and Bill exchanged glances. "McIntyre?"

The captain smiled. "McIntyre will be sure to be there when we announce that we've caught the guy. That's all that matters to him."

\--

"You near a television?"

Ned heard Nancy chuckle. "I can be," she said. "After I tire your dog out."

"Well, I know how much it turns you on to see me in uniform."

"Hmm. You planning on a quickie before we head over to my dad's?"

"Don't tempt me. We're about to have a press conference."

"I'll run back to the house," she said. "And you're still gonna be ready for dinner in time."

"I'll be ready," he said. "And I'll call you."

Nancy laughed. "I'm going to come by and pick you up."

Ned hung up the phone and put his hat on. "All right," he said, as Bill did the same. "At least the captain's doing most of the talking."

"Half the battle," Bill said. "We have his face now."

"Hope so," Ned said. "Or he was just in the wrong place at the wrong time and this is just another dead end. No hits off the mug shots, right?"

Bill shook his head. "Doesn't mean anything," he said. "Damn computer generated pictures, I couldn't even tell if it was you, Nickerson."

\--

Nancy smiled at Ned as he slipped into the passenger's seat of her car, still in his uniform. "You looked good today."

"Thanks," he said. "They get a good shot of the composite?"

Nancy nodded. "And congratulations on being promoted to the lead detective in charge of the case," she said. "What about McIntyre?"

Ned stared at her for a minute. "Okay, you've convinced me, I will get eight hours tonight no matter what," he said. "I'm not lead detective on the case. For a minute there..."

"But..." Nancy shook her head. "The TV station must have gotten it wrong. Wouldn't be the first time."

"I only said two words," Ned put in. "The captain handled most of it."

Nancy smiled. "You looked very much in control of the whole situation," she told him. "Wherever this guy is, I'm sure he's scared."

"And McIntyre'll be the one smiling and telling everyone that it's all okay, once we catch him," Ned said, running his hand through his hair. "Do we have enough time to stop by my place, and the cleaner's?"

Nancy glanced at her watch. "The cleaner's, yes," she said. "But that's my favorite suit. What did you need?"

Ned reached over and laced his fingers through hers. "Oh... I don't know," he said, tracing his thumb over her index finger. "Maybe a little down time."

Nancy's lips quirked up. "How about we have dinner and then a lot of down time," she suggested.

After they drove through the cleaner's, Nancy made her way to her father's while Ned reclined in his seat and dozed off. In the driveway Nancy kissed Ned awake, then stepped out of her car, glancing over to the neighbor's. A tall girl with long ash-blonde hair, a few years younger than Nancy, was pulling a box out of the backseat of her car.

"Nikki!"

"Hey," Nikki called back, brushing her hair out of her eyes. "Haven't seen you in ages! What's up?"

"Not much," Nancy said, clenching her car keys in her palm. "Moving back for the summer?"

Nikki glanced down at the box, a faint smile on her face. "Just a few boxes," she said. "My new apartment's kinda small. You know how it is."

"So you're in the city now?" Nancy glanced back when she heard the car door slam, and Ned emerged, briefly illuminated by the headlights of a passing car.

"Yeah. Ned?"

Ned gave Nikki a wave, smiling. "How you been, Nikki?"

"Good," she replied. "My parents said they saw you on TV today."

"Yeah," he replied. "Watch yourself until we catch this guy, Nikki."

"Definitely," Nikki replied. "Well, my parents are already complaining about not seeing enough of me."

Nancy gestured over her shoulder at her father's. "Tell me about it."

Nikki smiled and waved again. "We'll have to do something this summer, okay?"

"Sure," Nancy replied, linking her arm through Ned's as he waved back at Nikki. "Good to see you again."

"You too."

By the time Nancy and Ned reached her father's door, he was already standing in the doorway. "Hannah's complaining," he said, but he was smiling. "Ned, your favorite dinner's getting cold."

"Not for long," Ned said, bounding up the stairs and vanishing into the kitchen.

Carson gave Nancy a brief hug as she stepped inside. "You'll be gone for how long?" she said, her voice muffled in his shoulder.

"A week, ten days," he said. "And Hannah's taking her vacation too, but if Ned leaves any leftovers, I guarantee she'll send them home with you."

Nancy smiled. "Thanks for inviting us over."

"I just hate seeing Hannah throw away all that food," Carson teased her. "She's not used to cooking for two instead of three."

Half a block away, the driver of the grey sedan that had followed them all the way from the precinct house waited until both porch lights had clicked off, then eased the car away from the curb, vanishing into the night.

\--

Their shoes were the first to come off. Shoes, the suit jacket tossed across the back of a chair, her shirt. They stumbled toward the bedroom together, kissing, hastily undressing each other.

"You know, next time, maybe you could be wearing your uniform," Nancy murmured as she unzipped his pants.

Ned chuckled. "So you don't think your dad would see anything weird about that," he said, pulling his shirt over his head before he pulled her up into his arms. Mollie whined at their feet, and Ned apologized to her as he shut her out of the bedroom.

"We'll just tell him you're working a lot of overtime," Nancy teased Ned before they fell into bed together.

"Surprised you didn't ask about the cuffs," Ned mumbled as he pushed her knees apart with his palm and rolled on top of her.

Nancy wrapped her arms around him, pressing a kiss just under his jaw. "Not tonight," she said. "Unless that's what you want, but," she gasped at the press of his fingers between her thighs, "you seem to be doing fine without them."

He kissed her, slow, and she folded her legs around his waist. "Yeah," he whispered. "It's your turn next, anyway."

After, as they slowed, he sighed. "I love you," he whispered.

"Love you too," Nancy whispered, rolling over to face him. She traced her leg down his, then pulled the covers over them, resting her forehead against his chest. "Dad's out of town and you had to pull a serial killer case on the one week we don't have to worry about him dropping by. Find this guy and put him behind bars, I like waking up with you."

He laughed and kissed her forehead. "I don't know why you're so paranoid," he said. "Your dad almost never stops by and, besides." He brushed her hair from her cheek and smiled down at her. "He had a bet going with me that I would have nailed you way before now..."

Nancy's eyes widened before she smacked him. "Liar."

At three o'clock in the morning Nancy woke and swept her arm beside her, forcing her eyes open when she didn't find Ned there.

There it was again. A dull thud, the scamper of claws.

Nancy groped on the back of the bathroom door for her robe, slipped it around her and walked out just in time to see Ned toss the tennis ball, not even bothering to watch its trajectory, and Mollie bounded after it. Halfway back, the ball clenched in her jaws, she stopped and presented her head for a pat, her tail wagging, and Nancy obliged her. Ned glanced up, his mouth slightly open, and he let out one audible breath before smiling at her.

"Didn't mean to wake you."

"I'm not sure Mollie ever sleeps," Nancy said, sitting down beside Ned. He had spread his case notes and the crime scene photos all over her kitchen table. Mollie jumped up to perch with her paws just over the edge, pushing a few college transcripts further in, and Ned patted her on the head before he tossed the ball toward the back of the house, to echo in a dark corner before she retrieved it.

"There has to be something I'm missing."

She studied him for a long moment, then climbed to her feet again and started kneading his shoulders while she glanced over the paperwork, a scattered jigsaw of a thousand coincidences and a million more insignificant facts. Ned's head was just hanging loose when Nancy slowed, then stopped, reaching for one of the transcripts Mollie had knocked askew.

"See this?"

"See what?" Ned rubbed at his eye with his fist before looking down at Nancy's indicating finger.

"History course. That's what that prefix means. And this number, that means it's an introductory overview course. Six of the girls were enrolled in them, the semesters they were killed."

Ned gazed back and forth, comparing. "Except for the grad students. But, even then... it's not the same overview course. Even if it was..." Ned flipped through his notes.

"But they're all taught by the same teacher."

"Who had an airtight alibi for three of the first five murders, and was out of the country during the sixth," Ned said. "We stopped asking after that. He's clear."

Nancy gave Ned's shoulders one last rub before she slipped back into her seat. "Well, that's it," she said, giving him a half smile. "That is the limit of my brilliance for the evening, a lead that was tracked down and disproved years ago."

Ned laced his fingers through hers. "Still," he said. "We'll figure it out."

Nancy let her eyelids slow to close as she propped her head on her other hand. "You must not have much faith in McIntyre."

"He's good," Ned protested. "I'm sure he's good. But... you know how it is."

Nancy nodded sleepily. "I know how it is," she affirmed. Then she leaned forward, her eyelashes fluttering, and kissed him, slow and lingering. "Come to bed," she murmured. "You need your rest."

"Somehow I don't think rest is what you have in mind," he said, before he gathered up his papers and placed them out of Mollie's reach, then followed his fiancé back to the bedroom.


	2. Chapter 2

"You look familiar," the girl had said, loud over the babbled conversation of the club, and extended her hand.

"You've probably seen me around campus," he'd said, shaking it, smiling. "Henry."

"Amanda."

Splitting a cab had made sense. Following him up to the hotel room had made sense, after the fifth shot, because he was only changing on the way to another club, after some girl had jostled his beer and spilled it all over his pants. She'd let the cab go, reasoning they could always call another, and he'd looked at her sympathetically when she slumped just inside his doorway.

"You okay?"

"That last one hit me pretty hard," she'd said, and then it was all a blur.

She was all pain, now. All pain. She had been hungover before, and that was dull ache and nausea, but this, her arms hurt, her legs, her mouth was full of—

"Remember that soda I gave you?"

Amanda's eyes widened. She was gagged, tight, and when she tried to lower her arms she heard the metallic sound of her joined wrists. Her legs could move an inch in either direction, and the air conditioning breathed cool over her skin.

Her bare skin.

Amanda screamed into the rag over her mouth, but it was faint even to her own ears.

"Does it hurt yet?"

She screamed again. Burning metallic down her throat, and her legs, she could barely move. Her stomach hurt like hell. The knowledge that she couldn't close her legs was worse.

"Must be yes," Henry said. He slipped on his knees onto the bed, as she strained against the cuffs holding her ankles, and she saw the glint of something in his right hand. Metal.

The pain was unbearable.

"Just relax," he whispered, wrenching her legs apart. "It'll be over soon."

Then it was worse.

\--

"I have to leave."

"No, no you don't," Nancy mumbled, groping for Ned in the dark, drawing him back to her. "Go back to sleep."

"I can't, baby. I'm sorry."

She frowned at the feel of his jacket under her embrace. Still naked, she sat up, sweeping her hair away from her face. "Please," she whispered. "Just another five minutes."

He pressed kisses against her forehead, her cheekbone, the point of her jaw, the soft hollow under her earlobe, and she made a soft pleased murmur, her eyelashes fluttering against her cheeks. "Stay," she breathed again.

He pushed her back down, gently, and she gazed up at him, searching his eyes as he brushed her hair back from her cheek in soft smooth strokes, her palm loose and open on the pillow beside her. He shook his head. "I'll see you tonight."

"Promise," she whispered, twisting the pillowcase in her fist. "Promise me."

He leaned down and pressed another kiss against her forehead, and she wrapped her arms around him hard. "I'll call you."

"That's not a promise," she murmured, but he could hear the exhaustion in her voice.

When she woke again he was gone, her alarm was blaring, and Mollie was asleep at the foot of the bed. Mollie usually slept in the bed with her when Ned wasn't home, but seeing her there only made Nancy feel Ned's absence all the more. After their run, while she slipped two slices of bread into the toaster and stirred another sugar into her coffee, she turned on the television for five minutes' worth of news bytes before she left.

"To repeat, another body has been found, bringing the count to nine. An unidentified female college student is the latest victim in a series of escalating attacks, leaving the greater Chicago area in a state of panic."

Nancy snapped off the TV and shook her head dismissively. Typical media hysteria. After all, the composite sketch had already been made. It was only a matter of time before someone made the connection and came forward.

Nancy gave a last look at the now-empty dining room table before locking the door behind her.

\--

"Another tip."

Bill looked as tired as Ned felt. "Another crackpot?" Ned asked, shaking another couple of aspirin out of the bottle.

Bill ran his palms over his face. "Hope not," he said. "Bouncer at a club, says he remembers seeing the girl there last night."

Ned grabbed his suit jacket, heading for his captain's office. "Got a lead."

The captain nodded. "Keep in contact."

Ned waved Bill to the driver's seat as they claimed a patrol car. "Nan?"

"You left without," she dropped her voice, "goodbye sex."

Ned laughed, glancing at Bill before he answered. "Sorry."

"And without promising you'd see me tonight." He could hear the pout in her voice, could see her tracing a fingertip over the glass surface of her desk. "I know, I know... not until you find this guy."

"Sucks, doesn't it."

"You know I understand, right?"

"You have to," he laughed. "You put me through it enough times."

"I just wish I could help."

"You can," he said lightly. "You are helping."

"But I'm not there with you. I'm not the one driving the car. I'm not the one with some hot lead on the case."

"Nor do you have a badge or a gun."

"I could change that."

Ned smiled. "Love you."

"So you have to go," she sighed. "Love you too. And I'd better see you tonight."

"We could grab a sandwich."

"If that's the only way I can see you, then sure," she said. "How about I make you something and I'll bring it to the station. Maybe even a little something for Bill."

"Better make it a big something," Ned laughed. "That sounds great. Love you."

"Love you."

The bouncer went over to one of the offices and squinted at the composite sketch. "Looks like him," he said. "They took a cab together, around eleven last night."

"Which way?"

The bouncer pointed toward downtown. "That way."

Ned paused when they reached the street. "All right, we have confirmation. The same guy last night."

Bill looked down at the composite. "The same guy for all of them."

Ned leaned against the side of the car and let his portfolio fall open. The two transcripts were on top, and he gazed at them. History classes.

"Since we're already so close to the campus..."

\--

Professor Hoffstart's office was a tiny closet off a long hallway lined in dirty linoleum and flickering under fluorescent lights. The cement walls were covered in thick layers of beige paint, glistening and pockmarked. Ned could hear distant murmured voices, but the hall was otherwise eerily quiet, deserted between the finish of spring classes and the beginning of summer session. Ned shrugged in his jacket, watching Bill knock on the professor's door.

"Come in."

Books. Every spare surface was covered in books, some of them so old and brittle that the spines had split and they were only being held together by equally brittle rubber bands. In the wall space that wasn't covered by bookshelves, Hoffstart had hung framed dust jackets and his various degrees. Hoffstart glanced up, an open folder of red-marked research papers on his desk, and stood as he glanced between Ned and his partner. "Can I help you?"

Ned and Bill flipped out their badges. "We're not looking at you as a suspect," Ned began. "You've already been cleared. But these girls have all been in your classes, and there just has to be a connection here we're not seeing. This man," he said, pulling the composite out of his portfolio, "this man was seen with two of our victims. Does he look familiar?"

The professor lifted a pair of half-moon spectacles from his desk and slipped them on, then took the composite. "He looks familiar," the professor said, then slipped the spectacles off.

Bill waited a moment before asking. "So you've seen him around."

"Probably," Hoffstart said. "Couldn't really say where."

Ned took the only other chair in the room that wasn't covered in books and sat down. "The students who were killed. You taught them. What were they like?"

"The ones I taught... they were..." Hoffstart leaned back. "It's hard to say. We were almost finished with the semester, and their assignments were passable, but most of them didn't show very much commitment to the course. One of them... Paula Forbes."

Ned nodded, encouraging him to continue.

"She was just on the verge between a B plus and an A minus. Her exam would have determined her final grade, but." Hoffstart shook his head.

"So were the grad students assistants for you?" Bill asked.

Hoffstart shook his head. "It's a small department, though," he said. "We all know each other here."

"But you can't place this guy."

Hoffstart looked at the composite again. "I don't know what it could be," he said. "I'd almost say he's..."

"He's what?" Bill prompted.

Hoffstart shook his head. "I end up memorizing seventy-five names a semester," he said. "If I'm lucky. This guy... not a student. Not a TA in the department. He could be a graduate student in another department. Even then..." he squinted. "The face isn't quite right."

"So what's wrong about it?"

Hoffstart shook his head. "I can't place it," he said. "Nothing so simple as a third ear or unibrow."

Ned nodded. "Okay," he said. "So, you've seen this guy around. All right." He reached into his pocket. "If you see anything that jogs your memory, here's my card."

\--

Singleton came into the conference room with a bag of chinese food. Ned capped the whiteboard marker and dug through the paper boxes, distributing them around the table to the other two task force members.

Bill unwrapped a plastic fork. "Four different history survey courses. Not a student. Not a TA."

Ned shook his head, dumping half a carton of rice in with his beef. "Is it possible that this is the wrong track?" he said halfheartedly.

Singleton looked around. "How?" he said.

Bill shook his head, swallowing a mouthful of egg roll before he retorted. "There's no way all this is a coincidence."

"But this guy is a ghost." Ned took another copy of the composite and tacked it up on the board. "He shows up and sees these people, he shows up at the club, and then he's gone."

"A visiting professor?" Singleton volunteered.

"If he's been visiting for eight years and these guys still don't know who he is..." Ned trailed off. "What makes this guy do this?"

Singleton held his hands up, palms out. "Don't ask me," he said. "I don't get my kicks drugging my dates and then getting off when they're in their death throes."

"The MO's always consistent." Ned touched the picture of the second victim, a redhead with paper-pale flesh, her eyelashes wet and thick on her cheek, red marks on her wrists and ankles. "He doesn't just want to rape them, he wants them entirely powerless when he does it. He's a step away from a necrophile, waiting until they're nearly dead."

"He cuts their throats. He doesn't want them talking."

Singleton looked down at his food, a sour expression on his face as he pushed it a few inches away. "He kills them twice. If he doesn't have the nerve to slit their throats, it's already done, they're already doomed."

"He's always slit their throats, though," Bill said.

Ned looked at the photograph of the first victim before turning back to the table. "Maybe there was a time when he didn't," he said.

\--

"Nancy Drew."

The harried-looking man on the other side of the security chain gently jiggled the baby on his hip as he scowled through the crack in the door. "There's no Nancy Drew here."

"How long have you lived here, if you don't mind my asking?"

The man shrugged. "A couple months," he said. "And I really need to get the baby to sleep."

The door shut and the deadbolt slid into place and the man in the hallway of the apartment building stood for a moment with his hands in his pockets, considering. He turned on his heel and walked quietly to the next apartment and knocked.

A woman with long brown hair, late fifties, in a t-shirt and jeans, answered the door. "Yes?"

The man smiled at her, wide, showing several white teeth. "My name's Danny," he said. "I was in class with Nancy Drew, and..."

He started coughing then, hard, waving off the woman's repeated queries as to whether he was all right, until she pulled back the security lock and let him inside to give him a glass of water. He sat down on her couch, the water barely touched, looking at the worn coffee table and the fraying rug.

"This is the last address I have," he continued. "I'm only in town for a few days, and she made me promise that I'd look her up if I was ever in Chicago again. You don't, happen to..."

The woman fidgeted slightly on the couch, glancing toward her phone, and he knew he had her. "I don't know," she said, glancing back at him.

He let his mouth widen to another smile. "I know," he said. "You don't know me from Adam, and here I am..." he shrugged. "Look, if you could just, if you know how to contact her, give her my info. I'm sure she'll want to talk to me."

The woman's face went slack with relief. "Could you?"

"Sure," he said gently. He reached into his pocket and found only a pen. "If you have a piece of paper, I'll write down my name and number..."

"Sure," she said, disappearing into the kitchen and coming back with a magnetized grocery pad. He wrote the name and number under a cartoon image of a yellow and white kitten, ripped it off the pad, and handed it back to her. "Thank you so much for this, you don't know how much it means to me."

"It's fine," she said, rubbing her palms over her thighs, and he took the hint and stood.

"Thanks again."

\--

Nancy hadn't been able to concentrate at work. After Ned's brief phone call, anyone who dropped by her office had to rouse her from a daydream before she would respond. She took off a few hours early, took Mollie for a run, and after a shower went to the kitchen to fix dinner. A big wicker picnic basket she'd inherited when she'd moved out stood open on the table, and Nancy had wrapped up three plates before she decided that maybe a fourth wouldn't be a bad idea. She pulled a bowl of Hannah's mashed potatoes out of the fridge and found another plastic container, and was just reaching for a spoon when the phone rang.

"Hello?"

"Hi Nancy."

"Hi, Mrs. Ward."

"How've you been doing?"

"Pretty good," Nancy said. "Just making dinner for my fiancé. How are you doing?"

"Pretty well," Mrs. Ward replied. "Don't worry, I won't keep you long. I just had a man knock on my door, and he really wanted to get in touch with you. He said he went to school-- hang on, Nancy."

Nancy listened with half an ear as Mrs. Ward walked across the floor. "Oh," she heard, and then the deadbolt clicking back, and then, as Nancy considered between two different slices of meatloaf, the gasp.

Then the scream.

Nancy dropped the fork she was holding. "Mrs. Ward?" she called into the phone. "Mrs. Ward, are you all right?"

The sound of blows, another series of screams. A called exclamation, then the receiver being scraped across the floor, the electronic chirp as the call was ended.

Nancy listened to the dial tone in consternation for a few seconds, then hung up and turned the phone back on again. "Come on, come on," she said, tapping her foot impatiently as the phone rang once, twice. Mrs. Ward didn't answer.

Nancy hung up and dialed another number. Two rings, and then Ned picked up. "You got dinner almost ready, Drew?"

"Yeah," Nancy retorted, sticking her thumb in her mouth to lick off an escaped glob of ketchup. "I do. But something weird just happened. Mrs. Ward, my old neighbor, remember her?"

"Sure," Ned said, sounding distracted.

"She just called me, and said some guy knocked on her door today and said he went to school with me, and then, I swear to you, it sounded like someone attacked her."

"Say that again." Ned's voice was low, but hard.

Nancy repeated herself. "She was screaming. I was just wondering if you could send a patrol car by there, just in case something did happen to her. I don't want to overreact about this; maybe it's nothing, but it sounded pretty bad."

She could hear the muffled sound of Ned shouting. "Nan—Nancy, listen to me very carefully. I've just sent a patrol car after her, and I'm sending one after you. They should be there in under fifteen minutes. Grab your overnight bag and do not open the door to anyone unless you see a badge. I'm sending—I'm sending Singleton and Galbraith, you know what they look like."

"Yeah," Nancy nodded. "Is this just—"

"It's just to make sure," he said. "Just in case. If everything's fine you can laugh at me but I'm not taking any chances."

"Oh." Nancy sealed the last container and put it into the picnic basket before she went into the bedroom for her overnight bag. "Is there anything you want?"

She could hear him breathing, even though her fingers were trembling, even though the adrenaline was roaring in her ears. "Bring Mollie too."

Nancy's hand lingered on the back doorknob before she twisted it open and scanned the backyard. "Mollie! Come here!"

Immediately Mollie bounded for the house, her tail a blur of motion, up the stairs, and Nancy bolted the door behind her. "Mollie, girl, we're going on a little trip, okay?" Nancy grabbed a much-chewed tennis ball and shoved it into the pocket of her bag. "We'll take some food, and... Ned, what do you think, maybe some books to read?"

"They're almost there," Ned muttered under his breath. "Yeah, Nan. Bring books to read."

She barely looked at the titles before she threw them into her bag, then zipped it shut.

"Okay, they're in the yard. Coming to the door."

Nancy raced to the front door, peering through the peephole. "Okay, yeah," she breathed. "I see them. You want me to let you go?"

"No," he said, almost too quickly. "Stay on the phone with me, they're bringing you to the precinct house. You're on the cell?"

"The house phone," she said apologetically. "I have to hang up."

He sighed. "Put Singleton on the phone for a minute."

Nancy twisted the front deadbolt and opened the door to the officers. "Ned wants to talk to you," she said, thrusting the phone at Singleton. "You," she said, beckoning Galbraith, "get the picnic basket."

After a few nods and some rapid conversation confirming that Singleton was who he said he was, he handed the phone back to Nancy. "Okay, they're bringing you as fast as they can."

"Love you."

Mollie paced the backseat, standing on Nancy's thighs to gaze out her window for a few seconds before she went to the other. As Galbraith switched on the siren and maneuvered through the cars standing at a red light, Nancy leaned forward and tapped Singleton on the shoulder, through the grating between them.

"Have you heard anything on Mrs. Ward?"

Singleton turned and gave her an apologetic shrug. "With the tone in Ned's voice, I didn't have much time to do anything other than make sure of what your address was before we left."

Nancy nodded and sat back, her mouth in a firm line.

Ned was pacing in the parking garage when they pulled into it, and Nancy scrambled out as soon as he opened the door. Mollie circled them, brushing against their legs as Ned pulled her into his arms. "Look, go inside, get settled," he said. "Bill just went to the scene, I'm going to go out and see what happened, but I'll be back."

Nancy nodded, pulling back to look into his eyes. "What happened."

Ned half-turned his head. "The neighbor, the guy who lives in your old apartment. Apparently he called 911 after whatever you heard happened. I'll be back soon, I swear."

Singleton took the picnic basket out of the trunk and stood waiting, and Nancy wrapped her arms around Ned's shoulders, gave him a quick hard kiss before pulling back. "Come back soon," she ordered him, quietly.

"I will," he promised, before sliding into the seat Singleton had just vacated, the patrol car speeding off again.

Nancy sighed and wrapped her fingers around Mollie's collar, petting her a few times as Singleton walked the two of them to the elevator. "Got anywhere Mollie can stay?"

Singleton patted Mollie's head as she scampered around the confined space. "We can board her with the K-9s," he said. "For a little while. We'll figure something out."

Nancy ran her hands through her hair and sighed. "It's nothing, right," she murmured. Then she smiled. "Maybe Ned just wanted dinner early."

Singleton managed to crack a smile as the elevator doors slid open. "Sure," he said.

"Don't worry, you'll get some too. I managed to pack extra."

\--

The ambulance was just pulling away from the curb when Ned and Galbraith pulled up at the apartment house. Ned could have found it in his sleep, after all the times he had driven over to her place.

There was blood on the rug, visible through the open doorway. Ned shook his head and walked over to Nancy's old apartment, to where Bill stood with his notebook open and a man sat on the couch with a baby across his knees. The couch was in the wrong place, the coffee table was missing...

Ned shook his head to clear it. He had made love to her for the first time, here. If his hunch was right, she would have died here as well.

Bill looked up when Ned walked in. He thanked the man on the couch, quietly, then came over to his partner. "He made a positive ID on the sketch," Bill said softly. "He says that man came to the door, asked if Nancy was here, and then no more than ten minutes later he heard screaming from the other apartment. He caught a glimpse of a man fleeing, same clothes and same height, same guy, has to be. He walks in and finds Mrs. Ward on the carpet, assaulted."

Ned nodded. "Did you catch her before she left for the hospital? See if she could ID the sketch?"

"Not yet," Bill replied. "I'll go to the hospital after this and see what she says when she wakes up."

"Good," Ned said. "Good. Thanks for making it over here so fast."

Bill nodded. "Sure," he said. "Nancy bring dinner for us?"

Ned punched Bill in the shoulder, and he rubbed it with an exclamation, a grin on his face. "Just because she might think to bring you a muffin every now and then..."

"She totally wants me, Nickerson," Bill called over his shoulder as he walked out the door.

Ned walked over to the man with the baby across his knees, cooing to her softly. "Thanks for what you did," he said softly. "For reacting so quickly."

The man shook his head. "It was that guy's eyes," he said, then glanced down at the baby again. "I didn't want him anywhere near my daughter."

The crime scene team streamed in from the elevator, and Ned stood in front of the other apartment, his hand lingering on the doorknob before he followed them. He snapped on a pair of gloves as he walked through Mrs. Ward's place. The coffee table had been shoved to the side, the carpet bunched beneath the legs. The carpet was darker, there at the edge, and Ned lifted the glass from the edge of the rug. A few drops of water still pooled near the base.

Ned called for a lab tech and carefully dropped the glass into a bag. "Print this," he said. "After we get some elimination prints."

Another lab tech came up with the magnetic grocery list pad. "Something was written on this," he said.

"Print it," Ned said. "Maybe he wrote it. There are some security cameras outside this building, we need to pull the tapes and see if we can get a shot of this guy."

\--

"You sure there's a party in here? It sounds kinda quiet."

A wing of dark hair swept over the girl's flushed face, and she leaned heavily against the wall beside his door.

"Sure there is," he reassured her. "Maybe it'll be a little slow to start, but it's gonna be a blast."

She smiled and followed him in, leaning on his arm. "Okay," she said. "Okay."

"You need to sit down a minute?"

"Yeah," she mumbled.

"Maybe I can get you some coke, something to drink?"

She rolled her head to the side. "Got any diet?"

He smiled as he rattled around in the minibar. "Splurge," he said. "Just for tonight."

\--

Ned walked into the conference room to see Nancy, Bill, and Singleton seated at the table, over steaming plates of food. She pushed herself back from the table immediately and came around to him, and he gave her a brief, hard hug.

"How's Mrs. Ward doing?"

"I called the hospital, on the way back. She's in stable condition, whenever," Ned nodded at Bill.

Bill sighed and wiped his hands on his napkin before he stood up. "Thanks, it was great," he told Nancy, sweeping up his notebook.

"Thank Hannah," Nancy replied, waving as Bill walked out. Singleton followed with similar compliments, leaving Nancy and Ned alone.

"So what happened," Nancy said, once Ned's plate was in the microwave. "Bill wouldn't tell me, he said to wait for you."

Ned fidgeted with his fork. "It was him," he said softly. "He was there. We're pulling the security tapes, we might have his fingerprints..."

"That's good, right," she said softly. "Fingerprints."

"Hope so," Ned said. "Maybe he got caught doing..."

"What?" She looked down. "You think before he got good at this, maybe an attempted robbery instead of a rape homicide?"

"If we're lucky."

Nancy stirred her potatoes with her spoon a few times, took a small bite. "Do you have a computer here?"

Ned nodded. "You can use the one at my desk."

Nancy wrinkled her nose at him, but her eyes were gleaming. "No WiFi-enabled laptop?"

Ned smiled. "You mean you didn't bring yours with you?"

"It's in the crib," Nancy said. She shook her head. "So he attacked my old neighbor."

"I called, and your listings are still for your old address. They're going to change them to unlisted tomorrow morning."

"Why me?"

Ned shrugged. "You fit his sporadic profile," he said. "White female of the right age. You cruised by UC campus lately?"

Nancy shook her head. "Work and you, that's been it. Met George for lunch."

"I don't know," he said faintly. "But he didn't get you, and if he was in the mood..."

"Then he's probably got another girl," Nancy said, looking down at her plate. She pushed it back, reaching for the container, sliding the remains of her plate back in. "I'm going to lose my mind."

"Got what you wanted," Ned said, smiling faintly as he swallowed his last bite. "We'll be seeing a lot of each other for a while."

"You... what about me going to work?"

Ned shook his head. "I couldn't have enough cars following you to make me feel safe," he said. "You're staying in protective custody."

Nancy came up behind him and kissed the crown of his head. "Then let's get cracking," she said. "Because I want us home."

\--

"We have a fingerprint."

"Does it match Mrs. Ward's?"

"No," the lab tech answered, on the other end. "We took elimination fingerprints, and on the glass we found hers, and a perfect set that didn't match. Right hand."

"Run them through the database?"

"Not yet," the lab tech answered. "Doing that as we speak. Just thought we'd let you know."

"Thanks," Ned said. "Call me back as soon as you know anything else."

Bill was the next to call. "We have a positive ID," he said. "Mrs. Ward says the sketch matches the guy who attacked her, the same guy who gave her that story about going to school with Nancy. The super should have the tapes ready, I'll stop by on the way and pick those up."

"Thanks, Bill."

Nancy was sitting at Ned's computer, her chin cupped in her palm, unmoving. "So when you said that you weren't the lead detective on the case..."

"Only temporary," Ned replied, smiling. "The feds got called in, and he gets to liaise with them while I get to chase down leads around here. He'll be back any minute."

"Still, it's good."

Ned nodded. "Find whatever you were looking for on there?"

"The computers," she said slowly. "Did the girls have computers?"

"As far as I know," he said. "Come here, we have all the evidence in the conference room."

Nancy gazed at the crime scene photographs. "The three latest ones," she said. "Their computers, would they be here?"

Ned nodded. "Down in Technical Services," he said. "You need to look at them?"

"I'm just..." She shook her head. "It might be nothing," she said. "But I feel like I need to do something."

He kissed her temple. "Sure," he said. "If you hurry, maybe one of them'll be down there and I won't have to get my captain to call someone in. I'm gonna go over the surveillance tapes, once Bill gets back."

\--

"What was the last thing she did on her computer?"

The technical services guy, Jim, booted up her computer. "Instant messenger, if I remember," he said. "We tracked down the people she talked to, all except one, but it didn't seem to be anything about that night."

Nancy nodded. "Did she keep her schoolwork on the computer?"

Jim clicked through a few directories. "Yeah, she did. It's a mess, though."

"View by date modified," she said. "Did she work on any of her assignments the day she was killed?"

"It was exam time..." Jim clicked through a few more menus. "Yeah, she did. Here's this one... looks like a writeup of something. Maybe they watched a video in class?"

Nancy glanced at her watch and sighed. "It's too late to call the teacher," she said. "What about the other girls, did they have a document started on the day they died?"

\--

Ned paused the tape and stared at the shadowy figure, watching him catch the door and follow a woman hauling a load of groceries into the building. Nancy walked in, Ned's coat wrapped around her. "It's probably a dead end, but I'd like to go see Hoffstart in the morning," she said. "And if you want, I'll even tell you what to say and just listen."

Ned wrapped his arm around her waist and pulled her down into the chair next to him. "He never looks up at the camera, but this is him," he said. "And after this, I need about a gallon of coffee."

Nancy rested her head on his shoulder. "It's not a very good picture," she said. "I can't tell if I've ever seen him before. Where are you sleeping tonight?"

He pressed a kiss against her temple. "Here," he said. "Galbraith and Singleton are taking you to a safe place, where you can actually sleep on a mattress that isn't made of powdered cement."

Nancy sighed. "So not only do I not get to sleep in my own bed, with the dog you gave me—"

"Mollie's my dog," Ned teased her, resting his cheek against the crown of her head.

"Oh, she's my dog," Nancy replied. "And she gets to sleep in some cold lonely kennel and I get to sleep in some cold lonely safe house, which is probably a cheap motel room if I know the city at all, and you get to sleep here."

"And we all get to be safe."

She reached for him and pulled his face down to hers, kissed him long and sweet. "Call me when you get up in the morning."

He shook his head. "I'll be up before you are," he said. "You call me when you wake up."

"And we can go to campus," she said, searching his eyes. "Man, I hate this... I know it's nothing but I really want to check it out, and I can't."

He kissed her. "I want you safe."

"And there's no way that you can sneak out tonight and we can both have a mattress that isn't stuffed with powdered concrete?"

He shook his head. "Not tonight. I need to go over Mrs. Ward's statement, I need to find out if this guy's prints are in the system..."

She nodded. "You get to finish off all the fine print while McIntyre gets to play with the feds."

"I'd rather be here. Or with you." He traced her cheek with his fingers. "I'll call Singleton."

"Not Bill?" Nancy teased him, laughing when he took a swipe at her. "You not trust me?"

"I don't trust him," Ned growled, but he was smiling.

Nancy kissed him again before she stood up, tilting her head to stretch. "Get some rest tonight."

He pulled her down for another kiss. "I'll try."

\--

"Good news and bad news."

Ned looked up at the lab tech standing in the doorway. The tech's hair was rumpled, and he looked like he could use another two cups of coffee to Ned's three.

"Good news first."

"We have a perfect set of his right-hand fingerprints."

Ned let his head fall forward onto the desk. "But they aren't in the system."

The lab tech shook his head, and Ned sighed. "They are. Flagged although they were only found at one other crime scene. A maid went into a hotel room and found three drops of blood on the white wall she'd just washed the week before, and that is the only reason we found out anything about it."

"Blood that matched another rape and homicide?"

The lab tech nodded. "Paid in cash, a rough sketch that has a mustache and longer sideburns than ours."

"Alias?"

"Has to be, the name on the driver's license he showed at check-in didn't exist, and he vanished before they even found the body."

"Thanks."

\--

Nancy lay on her side, looking down at her cell phone. She was exhausted. The sugar high had bled off hours before, the euphoric rush of investigating with Ned had waned once she had left the police station. The comforter, the thickness of a sheet of cardstock, was rough and had been washed threadbare, covered in abstract brushstrokes in peach and aquamarine. The hotel room was all brass fixtures and scarred wood and neutral tones and an unfamiliar alarm clock. On the other side of the bedroom door were two officers, and sometimes if she held her breath she could hear the snap of playing cards and the click as they replaced another mug of coffee or another glass of cola on the cheap dinette set.

She stretched and grimaced at the texture of the sheets over her. Ned had been shocked at the cost of the five-hundred thread-count sheets she'd shown him when she dragged him shopping one weekend, but he slept like a baby on them, and she always swore she'd never take them for granted again after a night on rough hotel sheets. She reached for the book she had grabbed during her exodus, the strip of cardstock marking her place from three months ago, but the words all blurred together.

She wanted Ned. She wanted to hear his voice. She wanted an air conditioning unit that didn't rumble wetly to itself in the corner.

More than that, she wanted a way to leave. Not being able to test her hunch was infuriating.

She pulled herself to sit on the edge of the bed, the soles of her bare feet tracing over the worn rug, and sighed to herself before she slipped into her robe. Her detail had been relieved an hour before, and she paused with her fingers resting on the doorknob for a moment before she twisted it and walked out.

"I need one of you to do me a favor."

\--

The bedsprings squealed in protest one more time before he pulled back. The plastic sheets under the linens crinkled. He frowned at it; he always frowned at it, he hated the sound, but it was necessary. The blood had sprayed warm on his throat, in his hair, gushed over the point of his wrist as he held it to her neck and felt release.

There was no contact. The points of his hips against the curve of her inner thighs, her blood over his skin while his blood pulsed beneath. Her limbs spasmed once, twice, her eyelids pulling back to reveal glistening whites. His gaze didn't move from her until she was still. The gag was soaked wet. The cuffs were slick with blood, where she had struggled and torn the delicate skin, wrenching away from him.

He left her cuffed when he went to the shower, washing it all away. He made the water as warm as he possibly could, but no matter what, it never felt the same. She was beautiful and she was dead now.

The cuffs came off and he sprayed them with bleach before they went back into the bag. The linens he wrapped around her, until she was fully swathed, the blood just beginning to bloom through the layers of stiff cotton. He swept the comforter over her and scrutinized the wall for any spray before he slipped out of the room. Down the back stairwell, down to the linen closet, which took two tries before he found the right key. He hauled out a housekeeper's cart and a new set of linens, pulled his cap low and rolled it to the service elevator, and made it back to his room without seeing a single person.

He pulled the sheet back, tugged the gag out of the cooling mouth, pale blood-speckled arms stretched over her head, pale bleeding thighs spread loose to the footboard. The corner of his mouth curved up in a smile, before he walked over to the closet.

She was weak, this one, the girl blinking at him, her pupils dilated. He had chained her to the wooden bar in the closet, stripped naked, and he smirked when she drew her knees tight together, her arms pulling down to unsuccessfully cover her breasts. Her wrists were scraped raw, and blood had crusted on her forearms.

He cuffed one wrist to the bar and then took her other forearm hard in his hand as he unchained her wrists from each other, and she cringed, screaming into the gag.

"Shut up," he said harshly, wrenching her wrists behind her back and cuffing them together again. He pulled the knife out of his pocket and showed it to her, and her eyes widened. "You do exactly what I tell you or it's all ending right now. We're putting her into garbage bags and she's going into that cart, and if you're a good girl, you're going back into the closet after we're finished instead of onto the bed. I'm sure that's what you want."

He had his fingers wrapped tight around her forearm and he felt her pulse jump another ten beats per minute when she caught sight of the body on the bed. She screamed, and the sound was no louder than a whisper.

"That's not what you want."

\--

"You awake?"

Ned yawned audibly into the phone. "Barely," he admitted. "You sound like you've had as much coffee as I'm gonna need."

"We'll stop on the way," she reassured him. "Come on, come on. Come pick me up."

"The officers are still there, right?"

Nancy peeked out at them. One was just putting the deck of cards back into the box, while the other was flipping through stations on the television. "Still here," she said. "I think I'm a bit draining."

Ned chuckled. "You have them chasing down leads for you?"

"Just a little one," she said. "And I'm getting a good vibe about this."

"I'll be there," Ned said. "With coffee. A lot of coffee. And Bill, so make yourself pretty."

"What?"

"Er. Prettier."

"That's not possible, you know that," she teased him. "Love you."

"Love you."

Nancy, Ned, and Bill spent a long ten minutes holding up the wall outside Hoffstart's office before Bill grew impatient and called the humanities office. He was still navigating the switchboard, and Nancy and Ned were splitting a coffee, when Hoffstart approached in a loose Hawaiian shirt, his own cup of coffee in his hand.

"Anything I can do for you?" Hoffstart shook his head as he unlocked his office, and Nancy held his coffee for him. "I'm sorry, I still haven't remembered where I saw the man from the sketch."

Nancy put Hoffstart's coffee down on his untidy desk, took the seat directly in front and leaned forward. Bill flipped his phone shut and Ned took another long sip of coffee. "Oh. Professor Hoffstart, this is—Nancy Drew, she's assisting us on the case."

"Pleased to meet you," he said, extending his hand, and Nancy shook it, fairly trembling with excitement.

"In your classes, your introductory classes, do you offer extra credit? For those students who aren't performing so well?"

"Of course," he said. "I'm not unfair, and if anyone's willing to do a little extra work..."

Nancy reached into her purse and pulled out a brochure she'd talked one of her protective detail into finding for her. "Does that involve going to this?"

Hoffstart slipped on his spectacles and gazed at the brochure. Fifteenth Annual History Symposium, the title read, over a shot of the UC campus.

"That's it," he said, smacking the desk. "That's where I knew him from."

"So he attends the conference. You've seen him here before." Ned's eyes were gleaming.

"Right. Yes."

"We need a list."

Hoffstart reached over and booted his hard drive. "Just a minute, I'll give you her direct line. The dean of the department runs the symposium; she'll have the guest list."

Bill's phone rang, and he held up a finger and stepped out. Nancy and Ned turned back to Hoffstart. Nancy's fingers were trembling on the arm of the chair. As Hoffstart started navigating his computer, Ned put his arm around Nancy and leaned over. "You can never tell me you've lost your touch."

Ned took down the number once Hoffstart found, and after thanking him profusely, Nancy and Ned went out into the hallway, following Bill. Ned slipped his arm around her shoulders and kissed her, and Nancy beamed.

Bill's face had gone pale. "They couldn't reach you," he said. "You're going to want to hear this."

Ned took Bill's phone, but Nancy could only hear faint unintelligible noise through the receiver. Ned's fingers tightened against her shoulder, and she reached up and laced her fingers through his.

"Thanks," Ned told Bill, handing back his phone. "Nan, where did your dad go?"

"He's up at the Hamptons, visiting Aunt Eloise," Nancy said, searching his eyes. "Why?"

Ned shook his head. "Because this son of a bitch just called your house, saying he wanted to get in touch with your father."


	3. Chapter 3

The conference room was a sea of suits in muted tones, and Nancy hung back when Ned pushed the door open and stepped inside.

"This is our guy," McIntyre was saying, and Ned glanced at the projected image, dark where it overlapped the string of photographs lining the walls. "His name is Ray Banner, he was a bouncer at three of the clubs the girls visited before they disappeared, and he fits the profile. He's been in jail three times, aggravated assault. Two arrests for sexual assault but the charges didn't stick. We need to find him."

"The profile?" Bill hissed to Ned under his breath. Ned put a hand on his arm.

"Everyone on the task force, everyone. We find him and no one else dies."

Ned looked at the picture. Blond hair, pale eyes, the curved line of a nose broken too many times. Nothing like their composite image.

Captain Parrish was looking down at a report on his desk when Ned walked in and closed the door behind him. "Sir--"

"I know. The feds have their profile, and he feels good for it."

"But he isn't the guy."

"So you've tracked down the guy you've been looking for."

Ned clenched his jaw. "As soon as we get the list from the secretary at UC, it's just a matter of cross referencing and figuring out which one it is. And if it's a dead lead, so be it, but... I feel good about this one, and I need to know for sure."

The captain shrugged. "How long is that gonna take?"

Ned shook his head. "I don't know."

McIntyre walked in and pushed the door shut behind him, and Ned glanced back to see him. Bill was standing at his desk, his eyebrow raised, and Ned gave a small shake of his head. Bill sat down, with Nancy in the chair beside his desk.

"You ready, Nickerson? We're splitting up blocks for the canvas."

Ned looked at the captain again before he answered. "I have another few leads I want to track down first."

"So, this afternoon?"

Ned forced a smile. "I'll get back to you."

Once McIntyre had left, Ned slumped down in the seat in front of the captain's desk. "So he's taking the entire task force for this."

Parrish nodded. "But we need to catch him, and if you feel good about this guy, then check him out."

"With Bill?"

"That's all I can give you."

"The detail on Nancy?"

"There've been threats against her?"

"Not really." Ned looked down at his hands. "Not specifically. A man matching the description of our suspect attacked her old neighbor after he was asking for her address."

"Her old neighbor. Not her current neighbor. Has her actual residence been broken into?"

Ned shook his head. "No, but she received a message from this guy..."

"What, you have a voiceprint? And this message threatened her?"

"We don't. Have a voiceprint. And the message was asking for her father."

Parrish rubbed his palm over his face. "So you put a protective detail on her even though no threat had been made against her, specific or otherwise."

"She fits the general profile of his victims."

"So do a lot of the students at the university, and we don't have people guarding all of them. Ned... she's your fiancee and you practically live with her. I'm pulling the detail."

Ned's fist was hard white on the arm of the chair, but he nodded. "Okay."

Nancy looked up at Ned when he came by Bill's desk. "The secretary called," she said softly. She put her hand on his forearm. "I can see that vein on your temple."

"She has the list for us," Bill said.

Ned turned as the cry went up across the room. "He got another one."

\--

"He's escalated."

Only the size of the nose, the curve of the eyebrows, the thickness of the hips and the placement of birthmarks changed. Every girl looked the same after a night in the water. Ned stepped back and looked at the FBI profiler, who was squatting next to the body, his latex-gloved fingers pressing into the edges of wounds, nudging the cheek to turn the face to the side. Nancy was still beyond the yellow flutter of crime tape and even though he valued her insights, he was glad she couldn't see the girl who had been claimed in her place.

"Can you tell anything from the body?"

The ME shook his head. "Not about your perp. More wounds, more blood loss. She seems to have been tortured longer, but I'll have to look her over once she gets back to the house."

"No identification."

The profiler looked up. "No," he said, and then looked beyond Ned. Ned felt his fist begin to clench and stood up before McIntyre was beside him. "This many victims in this many days... he needs a place he feels safe, where he's unobserved, to do this. He's stalking at night. If you don't find him today, we need people at all the clubs in the area with the rough sketch. He's acting out for some reason, and unless we figure out why..."

In the back of the patrol car Nancy held her hand up, the back toward her, and tilted the plane of her palm. The diamond on her ring finger winked at her.

"You okay?"

Nancy looked up and met Bill's eyes, and smiled. "I'll be okay once we get this guy in jail and I can go back to normal," she said. "Although it seems like normal is a lot like this. Just less time in a patrol car and more time being able to sleep at night."

"It'll only get worse," he told her, but his eyes were sparkling. "Being with to a cop who's as devoted to the job as Ned is."

"Oh, and you aren't."

Bill looked down. "What can I say," he said softly. "You want someone who'll be there all the time? Don't marry a police officer."

The ring winked up at her. "He'll be there," Nancy whispered, under her breath. "He will."

Ned opened the car door and slipped into the driver's seat. "He's getting worse."

"So we go to the secretary and get the list of names."

Ned nodded. "Then we go somewhere and narrow it down. Nan, got your computer?"

"Yeah," she said. "Got it."

"Then what?" Bill asked.

Ned sighed. "Then we come up with a case against a guy who has left absolutely no damning evidence for any of these murders."

\--

"Should we even be bothering with attendees from the year he skipped?"

The three of them were closed into a conference room at the college library. Students trudged by the glass walls, their arms full of books and their cheeks carved into stark relief by sleepless nights. After the third wide-mouthed yawn Nancy witnessed, she had to fight to keep herself from doing the same. Once the brochure had been in her hand, she had found sleep nearly impossible.

The guest lists were in alphabetical order. The secretary had managed to find copies of most of the brochures from the previous years, complete with headshots of the keynote speakers, which Ned had gone through and eliminated immediately. They were left with pages of names, listed with affiliated schools.

Nancy, a green highlighter uncapped and poised in her hand, exchanged a glance with Ned. "I think we have to," he said. "For all we know, he never skipped a year; we just haven't found the girl yet."

Bill sighed. "They're all blurring together," he said, and rubbed at his eyes. "I need another coffee."

Ned kept highlighting once Bill was gone, but Nancy gazed at him steadily until he glanced up at her. "Hey," he said softly.

"What did the captain say?"

Ned capped his highlighter and laced his fingers together and looked down at them until his jaw relaxed again. "We need to find this guy, and figure out if he's good for it," Ned said. "And McIntyre has claimed the entire task force and all available officers for his canvas, looking for the bouncer, so you're stuck with me and Bill."

Nancy wrapped her fingers around her pen, tightly, until her knuckles were pale. "We going back home?"

Ned shook his head. "I'm gonna send Bill by there in a black-and-white later today but, unless you need something..."

"I need a phone charger," she said. "My cell phone went dead this morning."

He nodded. "Sure," he said.

Bill had just come back in and distributed another round of coffee when Ned's cell phone rang. "Nickerson," he answered it, then smiled at whatever he heard. "Hang on a sec, hang on," he said, and handed the phone off to Nancy.

"Where the hell have you been?"

Nancy smiled. "Hey George."

"I called you last night, this morning, tried your cell..."

"It's a long story," Nancy said, rubbing her forehead. "I'm... the case is interfering with life."

"Told you," George said. "Sorry. Thought you were avoiding my calls."

"No, not at all. Soon as I get my cell phone charged up again, I'll call you, but things are gonna be strange for a little while..."

"I haven't been your friend for this many years to be surprised now by something like that," George said. "I just wanted to make sure you were okay. Call me whenever."

"Thanks."

Nancy handed Ned's phone back, and he slipped it back onto his belt. "Okay, that's all for three years ago," he said, handing Nancy a sheet. She started to cross-check with the names on her computer screen.

Bill looked up from his list. "You said we need evidence. What was that about the hotel room, and the blood?"

Ned stroked the tip of the pen over another name. "It's circumstantial," he replied. "Of course. We have no evidence that those fingerprints were his or that they were made at the same time the blood. All we know is that the guy who Mrs. Ward said she let into her apartment, the same guy who attacked her, was at one time in a hotel room that a murdered girl also occupied. And even that doesn't connect him, at all, to any of the UC murders."

Nancy selected and deleted another name from the list on her screen. "Rachel's roommate said she wore a necklace and a ring. Were either of those recovered?"

Bill and Ned looked at each other. "Not that I know of," Ned replied.

"So maybe he's keeping trophies."

"Maybe," Bill said. "We just have to catch him first."

Nancy saved her document and propped her chin on her hand. "Okay, you two," she said, looking back and forth between the two of them. "Finish up so we can get started on an afternoon of calling history professors, and finding out which one of them hasn't come home."

\--

At five o'clock Nancy had her head pillowed on her elbow, her phone sandwiched against her other ear. The screen and keypad were warm against her cheek. "Is this Mrs.... Nash?"

"Yes," the voice on the other end answered, cautiously.

"My name is Nancy Drew, and I'm calling from the University of Chicago. According to our records, your husband Henry attended the history conference..."

"I'm sure he did."

Nancy pushed herself up. "You don't know?"

Mrs. Nash sighed into the receiver. "He and I are... we separated last week."

"You did," Nancy said, and sat back, searching for and finding Ned's gaze. "Could you tell me whether he's returned home?"

"I went by yesterday for a few things and he wasn't there then. Is there something wrong?"

Nancy glanced down at the notepad in front of her. "There's..." She sighed. "Your husband may be missing," she hedged. "Do you have a cell phone number, maybe a hotel address for him?"

"Not sure what hotel he said he'd be in," she replied. "I have his cell phone number."

"That would be great," Nancy said. "I'm going to give you a number, and if he does show up, I'd really appreciate a phone call. Just so we call off the search."

Mrs. Nash read off a number to Nancy, who scribbled it down on the pad, then ripped off the sheet and handed it to Ned. "May be missing?" she repeated.

"He just didn't show up for the last day of the conference." Nancy crossed her fingers on the table in front of her. "We just wanted to make sure nothing's wrong. It could be nothing."

Ned was already on the phone with Technical Services when Nancy hung up with the wife. "You sure?" He shook his head and flipped his phone shut. "The phone isn't on. They finally traced the number that called your house, and it's a no-name prepaid cell. That one's not on, either, so we can't triangulate a location."

Nancy swallowed a yawn. "You think maybe he's the one doing this, because his wife just left him?"

"Sounds like a good reason to me," Bill said. He was gazing at Nancy's computer screen. "They've been married for about three years more than the murders have been taking place."

"And a damn history teacher." Ned shook his head. Nancy yawned again and Ned's eyes softened in concern. "You look exhausted."

She gave him a lopsided smile. "So, no more protective custody. Does that mean no more crappy hotel bed?"

"I'm sure we can do something about that," Ned said. He glanced over at Bill. "You mind sleeping on a sofa bed?"

"I've slept in worse places," Bill replied.

"Technical Services'll call me when they run Henry Nash through the computer." Ned climbed to his feet and shoved his chair back under the table. "Him and everyone else who hasn't gotten back home yet. In the meantime, I say dinner."

"Sofa bed?" Nancy asked under her breath, as Bill finished gathering their papers.

Ned looped an arm around Nancy's waist and kissed her forehead. "Upgrade," he replied. "It won't be those satin sheets you like so much, but..."

"Egyptian cotton," Nancy corrected him. "So, a hotel. Nice hotels have room service."

"We'll get something to go," he told her. "I'm so tired I could drop."

\--

"Mr. Nickerson called in these reservations. We'll need an imprint of the credit card he gave us."

Nancy saw Bill reaching for his pocket, for the shield, and sighed. She was holding two sacks of fast food, burgers and fries, which she shoved into Bill's hands before she dug through her purse. "Here," she said, offering a credit card to the clerk. "Try this one."

The two of them were in a hotel lobby, and Nancy had to admit to herself that the chandelier overhead and the sheer presence of bellboys made her a bit more optimistic about what the mattress probably felt like. Not to mention the fact that even two cops guarding her door hadn't made her feel safe, not like she would with Ned beside her. But he was at his apartment, collecting another suit and a spare phone charger before he joined them, so Nancy was left to check in with Bill, who had begun their registration with a leer and a suggestive comment about signing them in as Mr. and Mrs. After her preoccupied threat that she would hurt him so bad he'd be on desk duty for two weeks, he had backed off.

Nancy's spirits lifted when Bill keyed into their hotel room and she saw the door to the bedroom. Even if she and Ned were too exhausted to do anything, at least they would have privacy.

"Did the house look okay when you drove by?"

Bill had already begun to unwrap a cheeseburger, and he swallowed a few fries before answering. "Everything looked fine," he said. "But I didn't go inside."

Nancy sighed and sat down opposite him at the small table, and he took another burger and fry out of the bag, pushing them toward her. She shook her head, then propped her chin up on her fist. "Not hungry."

"You seem... upset. I didn't mean to piss you off down at the registration desk, I was just joking..."

"It wasn't that," Nancy said. "I'm not used to running away like this."

"Ned said you'd never dealt with anyone like this guy before, though."

Nancy shook her head. "Not like this," she said softly. She took a fry, broke off half and ate it. "And I hate knowing that tomorrow morning we're probably going to find some other girl, and still not be any closer to finding this guy."

Bill had just begun to shake his head and reassure her when Ned walked in, a suit over his arm. "I'm starving," he called from the bedroom before he walked back into the living room, his tie hanging loose around his neck. "Man."

After dinner the three of them sat on the couch, Ned in the middle, watching television until Nancy felt her head drop forward, then snapped awake to see Ned looking at her.

"I think it's time for bed."

She nodded, pushing herself up to her feet, and gave Bill a vague smile. "See you in the morning."

She came out of their bathroom with her teeth freshly brushed, wearing only a t-shirt, to find Ned pulling his gun and cuffs off his belt before he took his pants off. The bathroom door closed behind him and she heard him brushing his teeth, and she reached over to touch the leather pouch on the table beside their bed.

Ned snapped off the lights when he came back in, and crawled into bed beside her. She ran her hand through her hair and turned to him, and he opened his eyes and turned to gaze at her.

"Hey," he said softly. "I thought you were tired."

"I was," she said, and pulled her shirt off, then lay back down, still.

He scooted closer to her. "I think I can feel your heart beating," he said softly.

Sh laughed quietly. "Probably," she told him. Then she reached over and pulled his cuffs out of his pouch, and dangled them from her index finger.

He glanced at the solid wood headboard before he met her eyes again, his gaze troubled. "What... the case..."

"It won't be like that," she murmured. "Do you trust me?"

He nodded immediately.

"Find the keys," she told him, and he leaned over her, his chest pressed to hers, a faint smile on his face as he groped beside her. When she heard the metallic slide of the keys on the surface of the table, she hooked her thumb under the waistband of his boxers and pushed them down an inch. He slipped them off and lay beside her with his head propped up on his hand, gazing at her.

"I do trust you," he said.

"Give me your hand."

He extended both his arms and she took his right hand in both of hers, her eyes steadily holding his, and snapped the cuff around it. She blinked at the cool touch of the metal on her wrist as she snapped the other cuff around her left.

"I don't have any more."

She looped her right arm around his neck, leaning over him, and kissed him slowly. "It's fine," she said. "This was all I wanted."

He let his left hand trail down to the warm bare flesh at the small of her back and linger there. "You know I love you."

She rested her forehead against his and smiled. "Yeah," she said softly. "I know you do." She laced the fingers of their joined hands together.

He tilted his chin up and their lips met again. "After all this is over, when our lives are back to normal again..."

She slipped on top of him, her bent knees on either side of his waist, and lifted their joined hands to the height of his shoulder. "Yes?" she breathed.

For that slow instant she saw the expression in his eyes, and her heartbeat was suddenly harder and even faster, and it had nothing to do with the cuffs or the poised arch of her hips over his. Then his eyes closed and the look was gone and he rolled over with her, shifting their joined hands over her head. She tilted her head back, suddenly mindful of her fiance's partner sleeping in the next room, and bit her lip to keep from moaning.

"What is it," she whispered against his chest, as he moved over her, her eyelashes fluttering against his skin as his hips brushed against the delicate pale length of her inner thighs.

"Shh," he murmured, and the chain sounded between their wrists as he led her hand with his between them. His mouth sealed over hers and her gasp was lost in their kiss as his fingers traced her thighs, the smooth edge of the seam of flesh beneath her navel. She traced a fingertip down the length of his erection and she felt his shoulders tense.

"It's my turn," she gasped, when they pulled apart, and she rolled over with him, on top of him. She tossed her hair back and knelt over him, and his fingers tightened against her hip as her thumb brushed the tip of his erection.

"Let me," he said, and when she leaned away from him, watching him carefully, he shoved his pillow to the side and sat up, resting his back against the headboard. She knelt over him again, her eyes closed, lips parted, her hair brushing against his cheek as she mounted him by slow degrees, the gentle rock of her hips. The force of her knees against the headboard made it thump against the wall until he shifted his hips forward, tilting his head back. "Nan, Nan, please," he breathed, his left hand groping over the slide of her flesh until he found her breast. She gripped the headboard in both hands, his fingers tight over her left hand, and the first time her hips slid flush against his he gasped harshly in the dark, her own cry muffled into his shoulder. He arched to meet her and she sank her teeth into his shoulder, stifling herself again, her flesh tightening as he flicked her nipple with his thumb.

"Ned..."

"More," he breathed. "Harder." His hand slipped from her breast to the small of her back and he urged her down to him, his knees folding and slipping behind her, to draw her to him. She moaned, and when her breath caught, when the close press of her flesh around him spasmed even tighter, he threw his head back and she kissed him, her tongue plunging immediately to his, her hips moving in desperate thrusts against his own. He closed his eyes and the pressure was unbearable, and with one hard stroke of her hot wet flesh against him he lost all control, and felt her cry out as he released.

Once his heart had slowed, once his white-knuckled clutch against her left hand had loosed, he came to himself again and felt her still tangled with him, her knees still spread wide on either side of his hips, her flesh still trembling between her thighs at the weight of him inside her. He brushed his lips over hers and her eyelashes fluttered up, her blue eyes hazed and soft, and she returned the kiss before she pulled away from him.

"Why," he said, his voice low, when he could manage to speak again.

"Why what?"

He lifted his right arm and pulled her left wrist up by the chain joining them. "Why like this," he said softly. "Why tonight."

She turned to him, lazily, her hair spilling over her pillow. "You thought it would make you uncomfortable," she murmured. "Did it?"

He shook his head. "Is that why?"

She looked up at their hands and the glint of silver between. "I don't fantasize about tying you up," she said. "At least, not the way you do. I like the fact that you're stronger than me. I like the fact that you could hurt me if you wanted, but you don't let yourself. I like being able to lose control of myself when we're together. I mean, one day," she turned to him, and waited while his gaze began the inevitable course down her body, "I would like to tie you up and tease you until you're about to explode."

"It wouldn't take much," he told her.

The side of her mouth curved up in a smile. "It's just sexier, for me, right now, to be linked to you longer than the few minutes you're inside me. I really, really, in spite of everything, miss you when you aren't here with me."

"So this is just a way to make sure I don't leave you in the middle of the night."

She rolled over, her nipples brushing his chest, and found the keys on the table. He took one into his mouth, flicking the tip with his tongue, and she moaned before he released her and she slipped the key into the lock.

"You won't leave me tonight," she said softly, once they were no longer joined. "And there will come a time when you never leave me again."

He pulled her into his arms and kissed her forehead. "I love you," he breathed.

\--

When she woke the next morning, Ned was in his boxers and pacing at the edge of the bed with his cell phone to his ear, speaking to someone in low tones. Nancy kicked the sheets off and smiled when he gave her a double-take, his voice trailing off to nothing as his gaze traced its way down to her loosely spread thighs. After a few muttered and hurried replies, he snapped his phone shut and climbed back into bed and into her arms.

"What was that about?"

"One of our boy-scout history professors had a record from his college years for marijuana," Ned replied. "One had five outstanding speeding tickets, but not in this state. Between their pulling leads for McIntyre, I got one of the lab techs to pull some credit records for me and make some phone calls. Nash and Black are the only ones who aren't accounted for."

Nancy smoothed Ned's hair back. "What does that mean? No recent activity on their cards?"

He nodded. "No hotel reservations made recently, no sign at their last-knowns. Nash's wife hasn't called back, and he's the one I feel good about. Bill's taking the sketch to the coordinator at the college to make sure that Nash is the guy."

"What if he isn't?" Nancy's voice was so low Ned had to strain to hear it. "What if your captain's right and this is just some crazy string of coincidences, and I'm not in any danger, and McIntyre finds the bouncer three states and eight murders later and this was all..."

"Just an excuse for us to spend a lot more time together?" Ned kissed her. "As long as we get this guy, I'm not really complaining."

\--

The squadroom was too quiet.

After negotiating with her boss for another few days "working from home," Nancy walked back into the precinct, maneuvering between the desks. All conversation was hushed, and when she slipped into the chair beside Ned's desk, Nancy was reluctant to say anything and break the quiet around them.

They were all waiting for the next call, the next body.

McIntyre, the profiler, and a few of the other agents were staked out in the conference room, looking grim. Through the shades Nancy could see the photos of the last body, the sea of papers and thick forearms and rolled shirt sleeves, gazes never connecting. She heard Ned's chair squeak when he stood up, looking at his captain, and with a single backward glance he disappeared behind the latter's door.

While she waited Nancy booted up her computer and looked over the list of names she had cross-referenced for Ned, checked her e-mail, and did a little background research in support of a lawsuit against a competing firm. Her legs tucked under her, her hair pulled back into a loose casual bun, she had her chin propped on her hand and was staring blankly at her computer screen when she felt something strike her shoulder. She looked up and Bill raised an eyebrow.

"Is everyone just waiting?"

Bill shook his head. "Not everyone's on the task force. It just seems like it."

Ned had left his cell phone on his desk, and when it rang, Nancy startled before she answered it. "This is Ned Nickerson's phone."

"Nancy?"

"Oh, hi, Mr. Lee."

Mr. Lee had been Ned's landlord ever since he had moved into his first apartment, and Nancy had been at Ned's place more than once when he had come by to check on things. Once, she had been stranded in Ned's bedroom after taking a shower, waiting for Mr. Lee to wrap up his conversation and leave, and he had taken so long that Nancy had fallen asleep on Ned's bed. But then Ned had woken her in an especially pleasant way, and they'd ended up in the shower again, so the afternoon hadn't been a total loss.

"Is Ned all right?"

"He's fine, he's just in a meeting right now. Is there a problem?" Suddenly Nancy was picturing some poor girl, blood pooled at her throat, sprawled in front of his door.

"There's a note on his door. I was next door this morning looking at the drain, and I didn't leave it there. I thought it could be you, but... you didn't leave it?"

"No," Nancy said, "and he was there last night, so... I'll let him know."

"You want me to go get it and read it to you?"

*Fingerprints,* Nancy thought blankly. Then she remembered what she had told Ned that morning. "No, that's okay," she said. "I'll tell Ned and he'll come get it."

She flipped Ned's phone shut and looked over at Bill, who was going through a thin folder. "You can't be serious."

Bill looked up. "Hey, it's gonna be a breeze," he said. "We find this Nash guy and we're done, me and Nickerson get the credit, McIntyre goes back to his office to sulk, and we get back to business as usual. Finding another missing girl."

Nancy left her computer open and walked around to Bill's desk, to look over his shoulder at the file. "Jenny Birch," she read. "How long has she been gone?"

"Her parents reported her missing yesterday, and I just called back. She hasn't turned up yet, so she's now officially ours."

"Student?"

Bill nodded. "But no one's found her yet," he said softly. "Usually someone's called in by now."

"You think maybe he has her?"

"Can't hurt to go interview the parents while we're on the way to the campus."

\--

Nancy hesitated a moment before she climbed out of the back of the car and slammed the door behind her. "Don't be too long," Bill called, and Nancy flipped him off before she grabbed the door behind Ned and followed him into the building.

She linked her arm through his, as they rode the elevator up to his floor, their forearms touching. "You got another girl on the side, Nickerson? She leave you little notes?"

Ned took her hand and slipped it into his pocket, with his. "Yeah, because when I'm not working, sleeping, or spending time with you, I just can't handle the loneliness."

The note on Ned's door was pinned there with a thumbtack, a small white sheet folded once, no marks on the outside. Ned snapped on a pair of gloves and pried the thumbtack out of his door, then unfolded the note.

"What do you think?"

Nancy was surprised to see looping feminine script on the long rectangle, under the cartoon yellow-and-white kitten. "'If she answers me tonight, when I call at eleven, maybe you'll be lucky.'" She glanced up at Ned. "This is female handwriting. What if we..."

Ned only paused a second before he shook his head. "Statistically there's almost no chance this is a woman. Especially not with the signs of sexual assault."

"With no fluids recovered," she reminded him. Then she shuddered. "God. What if whoever left this got inside your apartment."

Ned took out his flashlight and shined it on his lockplate. "No signs of forced entry," he said. "I don't see any toolmarks. If you'd picked this lock..."

Nancy ducked in close to it. "I don't know," she said. "I'd really... I don't like this."

Ned debated for a moment before he made the decision to humor her. "Stott," he called into his radio, "need you upstairs for a minute."

Only when Ned and Bill had gone through every room in Ned's apartment, guns drawn, and found no one there and nothing out of place, did Nancy come inside. Ned dropped the note and the thumbtack into separate plastic bags, sealed them, and scribbled a few notes in black marker. "Bill, if you don't mind, take these back to the station house and have them run for prints. Call me when you're on your way back and we'll meet up somewhere."

Bill snickered. "While I was waiting for you guys, I got a call. They just tossed an apartment they suspected Banner of being in, so the lab'll probably be backed up for a while, processing evidence."

"Evidence meaning whatever kitchen knives and dirty magazines they could find," Ned said dismissively. "They any closer to finding this guy?"

"He's found a hole and pulled it in behind him, I'll give him that."

At the Birch house, Nancy stayed in the living room while Ned interviewed the mother in the kitchen, their voices so low that Nancy couldn't make them out without concentrating, but she had recognized the look in the woman's eyes at the door and she didn't try too hard to hear them. A green-eyed girl with blond hair headed down the stairs, pausing when she caught sight of Nancy. For a moment she stood, indecisive, then continued down to the living room and took a seat on the other couch, tucking her legs up under her.

"You're Jenny's sister."

The girl nodded, but didn't volunteer anything.

"My name's Nancy, and I'm working with the cops to help them find her."

The mother walked through the living room on her way upstairs, Ned at her heels, and he gave Nancy a long look before they had disappeared. Nancy glanced at the girl, who was still silent, and then down at the ring on her finger.

"You're engaged?"

Nancy looked back at the girl. "Yeah," she said quietly, and nodded at the stairs. "To him."

Jenny's sister looked down. "Her boyfriend was going to propose to her," she said. "I was supposed to keep her distracted and detour her to the park and he showed me the ring last weekend."

"Supposed to," Nancy repeated, faintly. "But she disappeared."

Jenny's sister nodded. "She wouldn't have just run away. Not from him."

\--

All the way to the university campus, Nancy was quiet. Bill called Ned to let him know that he was on the way, and after he hung up Ned reached for Nancy's hand, the ring pressing against his fingers. Nancy turned to him, startled.

"You okay?"

Nancy looked down again. "What's her sister's name," she said. "She never said."

"Emily."

Nancy nodded. "Go ahead in," she said softly. "I'll wait here for Bill."

Ned paused for a moment, then reached up and tilted her chin back so he could see her eyes. He held her gaze for a long moment, then kissed her before he climbed out of the car.

She hadn't felt this way in a long time. Not since she had graduated from college and taken her job, and it had seemed so perfect. Corporate espionage. Tracking down copyright infringement and violations. Figuring out who was the leak and who was selling secrets, and she could travel or go home at the end of the day and feel that she had done something important.

But it didn't give her this feeling. She wasn't invested in it this way. And when Ned had told her that he would be her personal bodyguard for the duration, and she'd known that she could share this with him...

There had been no names, before. There had been no chance of saving anyone, just an endless line of girls drowning, already dead, already gone. Now she had a face, a sister, and a sketch.

When Ned climbed back into the car, she was already fidgeting, ready to be on their way.

\--

"What have we not done?"

Bill looked at the surface of their desks, which was covered in every scrap of paper, every picture, every bit of information they had been able to gather on Henry Nash. "We've tapped his credit cards, his cell phone, but the withdrawal from his bank account means he can keep doing this for weeks, maybe a month or two, without getting nervous. We're releasing the photo to the press, we're keeping track of the cell phones and credit cards of his victims."

"Someone has to have seen this guy," Ned said.

Nancy shook her head. "Even if I had seen him... look at him. Mildly good looking, but there's absolutely nothing remarkable about him. No moles, no oddly colored hair, nothing."

Bill glanced over at the conference room, where McIntyre and two of his men were interrogating Banner. He hooked a thumb over his shoulder. "You'd think someone would have seen that guy with our girls."

Nancy sighed. "Which clubs has he been hitting?"

Bill shoved a stack of phone records aside to unroll a map. "Mostly clubs around the main strip, but with some of these girls, it's been difficult to retrace their last steps."

"So if we post undercover agents at these clubs..."

Ned dropped his chin to his chest and laughed, and then raised his eyes to gaze at Nancy. She could see a faint smile on his lips. "Maybe if we post ourselves at the clubs. With no backup. And I don't think you even have a gun permit."

Nancy pulled the elastic out of her hair and shook it over her shoulders, ignoring Bill's suddenly slack jaw. "But he's stalking, and he's vanished without a trace, and he has Jenny."

"We think," Bill said, after he recovered. "We think he has Jenny. For all we know, Jenny went off with her boyfriend for a long weekend."

Nancy shook her head. "I'll talk to him," she said, "but, I don't... I don't like this. Besides, now that McIntyre has Banner to sweat, doesn't that free up anyone to back us up?"

"If they're finished tossing every apartment he's been in for the last eight years and finding whatever circumstantial evidence they can against him, sure," Bill replied.

Nancy sighed. "All we have is circumstantial evidence," she mumbled. "He just happens to be missing, he just happens to match the general description. Maybe if we go to those clubs with the picture... remember, everyone said the composite didn't look quite right. His picture and Jenny's picture."

Ned nodded. "After lunch," he said. "And maybe a gallon of espresso."

After Ned took their sandwich orders and went to pick them up, Nancy called George. "How's Mollie treating you?"

George laughed. "She's a great running partner, Nan. I may have to kidnap her."

"You'll have to fight Ned for her," Nancy advised her, brushing her hair back from her forehead. "Sorry, things have been kind of hectic here, and I'm hoping it'll only be for a few days."

"It's fine," George soothed her. "I like having the company. How are you holding up? Maybe we can have dinner or something?"

Nancy was about to say yes when she remembered a pixie-cut brunette among the pictures of the previous victims. "I'll make you a deal," she said. "Whenever I get back home I'll make you dinner and you can bring Mollie over and we'll make a night of it."

"It's a deal," George said.

Bill looked up when Nancy came back to his desk, a file in his hand. "The tech guys took the graphing calculator Ned borrowed and compared the prints on it to the ones on the note from Ned's door. Look at this."

Nancy gazed over his shoulder at the printed note. "A perfect thumbprint," she said. "It looks deliberate."

"And it's Jenny's," Bill said. "So he does have her."

\--

Nancy looked at her outfit in the mirror, then turned to study her silhouette. The lights overhead were harsh, unflattering, and to pull off the ensemble she would need heels. Bess had the perfect pair, but Bess was not an option right now.

"Ned?"

"Hmm?"

He didn't want her to go along tonight, and he had done everything but say it outright. His reluctance to refuse meant that he had to drive her to the department store and wait in the dressing room while she selected a suitable camouflage, and he didn't seem happy about that, either. She was planning to ply him with another cup of coffee or an interlude in a dark corner of the crib before making her other request, but...

"You know that note on your door?"

He had been tapping his foot, she realized, belatedly, because it stopped suddenly a second after she finished speaking. Then his voice came, low and dangerously casual. "Yeah."

"If we don't get any leads..."

She pushed back the lock and the door swung back to reveal her to him, in a deep raisin cami with black lace trim and a black leather micromini. With the right makeup, which she would also have to buy, since she hadn't packed her entire urban survival kit during her hurried exodus, she would blend in perfectly, but his jaw was set. Not that his expression didn't leave room for the barely veiled slow measuring gaze up and down her frame.

"If we don't get any leads," he repeated.

She slipped her engagement ring around on her finger until only the band showed at the front. "He said you might have some luck if I answer the phone."

He half-shook his head, once, his knuckles white, his hands joined between his sprawled knees, then looked down. He looked almost ridiculous, in a charcoal grey designer suit, on a scarred and pitted wooden bench just outside the female dressing room. "Nancy," he said softly.

She let the door fall shut behind her as she walked to him, bare feet on the carpet, and put her hand over his. "If we don't find Jenny... Ned, if I keep him on the phone long enough, no matter what he's saying, we can run a trace, we can get an idea of where he is. But her... I have to do something. Now that we have a chance to actually bring someone home."

"Her chance of being alive, so long after..."

But she read the spark in his eye and she traced her fingers down his cheek. "There still is a chance," she said. "And if it were me."

He sighed heavily. "You take too many risks," he told her, looping an arm around her waist. "Too many risks to not have a gun and not have a bulletproof vest wrapped around you."

She rested her hand over his. "You're my bulletproof vest," she told him. "You'll never let anything happen to me."

"Mostly because Carson would murder me," Ned said before he drew her down to him for a kiss. "I swear to you, Nan. If I could, I'd have you on the next plane to wherever Bess is right now."

"You wouldn't."

"I can't." He half-shook his head again. "The downside of being attracted to such a smart, beautiful, powerful woman is that she is so smart and beautiful and powerful."

\--

"Have you seen this guy?"

Henry had his eye on a redhead in a halter top when he heard the voice, and something in it made him glance back. She stood at the bar and her flesh was pale under her dark outfit, but she didn't fidget on her tall heels. No ring on her finger, but he knew her all the same.

The policeman's fiancee.

The club had three different bars and he hadn't been to this bartender but the man glanced around anyway. He made some reply Henry couldn't hear, and then she produced another picture.

"How about her?"

Henry glanced back at the redhead. Her upper arms were muscular, although she was small. She would be a good replacement for Jenny, because by now Jenny would be too much of a liability. After a drink, a dance, a shared cab fare...

Henry ducked through the crowd into another part of the club, to wait it out, the prepaid phone in his pocket. If she did answer, maybe it would be her and the redhead. He needed a ticket out and she would be it, and although he wanted to grab her tonight, right now, knock her off those teetering heels and take her back to the close comfort of the hotel room with the plastic sheets and the girl waiting in the closet, he saw her whispering into her wrist and knew it was too risky. Just as it had been every time he'd picked up her trail and followed her. The police detective, the one who was responsible for the horrendous sketch and then the year-old snapshot on the news, was always too close to her.

Henry lifted the circle of a joined index finger and thumb and framed the redhead in it for a second, before she was moving again to the music, her hips swinging, laughing.

\--

Time had stopped meaning anything, here. Jenny knew she had a few hours, if she was lucky, between the door closing and his return with another girl and another nightmare, but she had to wait, until she was sure he was gone.

Her fingers were shaking when she gripped the bar stretching across the closet. She wasn't strong enough to pull it out, and her weight wasn't enough to break it. She had tried so many times, during the hours while he slept or while he was gone, but nothing had worked.

Taking a deep breath through her nose, she kicked her feet out in front of her, then rammed her heel backward into the wall. After a lifetime of heartbeats, afterimages dancing in front of her eyes, she let her chin fall to her chest but didn't open her eyes, because if she opened her eyes, if she saw it again...

She launched herself up and kicked the wall again.

On the third try she heard someone come into the bathroom on the other side of the wall behind her. She swung forward and beat both heels into the wall, hard, and heard a muttered curse.

Ten or thirty minutes or an hour later, her face and the gag were wet with tears and her heels were bruised and she felt her heart jump into her throat when a knock sounded at the door. "Maintenance. Anyone in here?" a male voice called, and Jenny's eyes flew open, then immediately shifted away from the bundle at her feet, the white face, the bloodstained mouth, the glassy eyes.

The man keyed his entry to the room and Jenny kicked the door. He called out again, light flooded under the door, and she prayed without a sound and without a breath until he slid the door to the side and saw her there.

\--

"What if he's not the one?"

Bill had an enormous bag of potato chips on the table and was taking out great handfuls, then eating them individually, one by one, from his hand. Nancy had a wet paper towel in her hand and was carefully wiping away her heavy eye makeup while she glanced down at her wrist, at her watch. Ned caught the glance but ignored it, feeling sick at the thought.

The profiler steepled his fingers. "You have someone else in mind."

Ned took the snapshot out of his breast pocket and slid it across the table. His shirt sleeves were rolled up to his elbows, his jacket was off, his tie hanging loose around his collar. If not for the fact that she was running on nervous energy and the thought that she might hear from him and thereby have some further clue, she would have passed out on the table, lulled to sleep by the perpetual sound of Bill's molars crunching potato chips into bits.

"He's a history professor, visiting from out of state, and his wife just left him. Nancy," Ned nodded in her direction, "figured out that he's been here at the same time as the murders, every year, for a conference on campus."

The profiler picked up the picture. "How old would he have been when the murders started?"

"Twenty four," Nancy supplied, wearily. She patted her face dry with another paper towel.

"What do you know about his background?"

"Practically nothing," Bill said around a mouthful of chips, then swallowed. "His description is good for an assault, he has no kids, and he might like to kill college girls in his spare time."

"Well." The profiler leaned back. "McIntyre is still convinced that Banner is good for it, and they've been pounding away at him for hours with no success. He's no angel, but I don't think he's good for this. So. Where do we find him?"

"We don't," Ned said. "At least, not easily."

Bill's cell phone rang, and he wiped his fingers on a napkin before flipping it open. "Stott," he answered. "Oh. We will be right there, right there. Don't..."

"What?"

"They've found Jenny," Bill said. "In a motel room downtown. She's en route to the hospital."

Ned and Nancy jumped up immediately. "We have to get a detail--"

"Already on it," Bill said, heading out of the room.

\--

She was so pale.

Between the strobe flash of streetlights Nancy had changed in the back of the cruiser, while Ned had his siren on and was weaving through traffic at breakneck speed. When she stood at Jenny's bedside Nancy was in jeans and a t-shirt, but still in heels.

Jenny's eyes were closed, her face almost almost calm, but Nancy could see the bruises, the purple torn tender flesh of her wrists over the blanket, and she left Ned at the bedside to find Bill.

"Is she lucid? Was she lucid when you brought her in?"

The doctor looked down at the chart. "She wasn't speaking," he said. "We're still examining her, but none of her injuries seem life threatening, at least not right now."

Bill nodded and flipped his notebook shut. "We need to get over to the hotel room," he said to Nancy. "Crime scene unit's already there."

"Why?"

"When the guy found her, she was stuck in a closet with the last victim at her feet."

Nancy had her fingers over her mouth when Ned came up behind her. "God," she breathed. "The last victim? What are..."

"We have to keep a guy in the room," Ned said. "In case he comes back."

Nancy turned around and looked at him, her eyebrows raised. "You think we'll be that lucky?"

Ned shrugged, lacing his fingers through hers. "He has to slip up sometime, right?"

"Right," Nancy replied. "Right."

\--

The redhead was half draped across the back seat of the cab, her eyelids drooping. "We there yet?" she slurred.

Henry saw the red lights swirling on top of the cars just outside the hotel.

"Not quite," he said, gesturing for the cab driver to go on.


	4. Chapter 4

"What do we have."

Captain Parrish was already there, Ned was gratified to see, and McIntyre hadn't yet made an appearance. The entire scene was crawling with lab techs, and Ned already had his gloves on.

"Four sets of cuffs, including what was on Jenny when she was taken to the hospital. Bleach, gloves, a set of housekeeping overalls, and a lot of arsenic. We'll have to analyze that. Plastic sheets on the bed. He's only been here a few nights, so this is probably only the original crime scene for two of his victims."

"The girl he left here?"

The ME was already kneeling over the body. "Signs of sexual trauma, throat cut, and there is a lot of blood. We haven't found whatever he used for that yet, but it's a thin long blade, maybe a straight razor."

"How long has she been dead?"

"Looks like about a day."

Ned heard a gasp from the other side of the room and turned to look over his shoulder. "Got it," someone breathed.

"Got what?"

From the side pocket of a duffel bag one of the techs pulled bag after plastic zippered bag, each one with a set of jewelry inside. Watches, necklaces, earrings, rings. He recognized a belly ring, an engagement ring, a barrette. He counted them wordlessly.

"One for each of them," he said. "And an extra."

Parrish came over. "McIntyre's gonna be pissed," he said. "I'm going to call and have Banner released."

Ned glanced over at Bill, who was poking his head out from the bathroom. "We need to get the hair in the drain analyzed," he said. "This is probably where he washed off after..."

Ned nodded. "Okay," he said. "Okay. How long has it been?"

Bill looked at his watch. "I don't know, but we've been here a while, and if he's driven by, he knows we're here and he'll be finding somewhere else."

"We have all his stuff," Ned said. "We have his handcuffs and his poison. So he'll need more. Captain..."

He nodded. "I'll call dispatch," he said. "We need to get a mug shot confirmed by Jenny and then we can canvas the hotels around here, see if he's checked in recently."

"And the sex shops," Ned said. "Easiest place for him to find some handcuffs this time of night."

Bill raised his hand. "I'm up for it."

"Course you are," Ned said, nodding at his captain before they headed out.

\--

Nancy glanced at her watch. Ten-thirty.

Jenny wasn't talking.

When the nurse asked if something hurt, she would shake or nod her head the barest inch, but that was as far as it went. Her parents had arrived, her little sister, and Ned had waited until a policeman had shown up to guard her hospital room, to leave Nancy with them.

Now, with Jenny's father finding a cup of coffee, Nancy came to the side of Jenny's bed, but couldn't meet her eyes. She had heard the doctor telling Jenny's parents about the extent of her injuries, and had barely been able to keep from crying.

"Jenny," she said softly, and Jenny turned toward her, deep shadows under her eyes, her face paper-pale against the pillow.

"I have to ask you to do something."

Emily looked up from the other side of the bed, and Nancy nearly shrank under the younger girl's gaze, the wordless pleading. She reached into her purse for the picture, but let her hand linger there without drawing it out.

"Did you ever... see... the man who did this to you?"

She shrank, visibly, turning in on herself, drawing her knees up and her arms against her chest, her back toward Nancy. Nancy ran her hands through her hair and took a deep breath.

"We need to know," she said softly. "So that we can find him, so he doesn't hurt anyone else again..."

Emily put her hand on her sister's arm and Jenny looked up at her for a long moment, then turned back to Nancy, her eyes gleaming with tears. She opened her mouth but didn't say anything.

"I'm going to show you a few pictures, if you're up for it. That's all. I swear to you, that's all. We just need to make sure."

After, Nancy walked out and called Ned on her cell phone. "It's him," she said.

"She identified him. Was it a good one?"

"It was clean," she said. "She still isn't talking, I think it'll be a while before she can, but it was him."

"You still okay there?"

Nancy glanced down at her watch. "His call."

Ned swore under his breath. "Nan, this guy is a sociopath. He kept Jenny chained in a closet with a dead body after doing God knows what else to her."

"I know what else," Nancy said, closing her eyes. "But he stays on long enough and we get a lead on him."

"And you want to take that chance."

"This can't happen to anyone else," she said. "Not if we can stop it somehow."

\--

At ten-fifty-nine the three of them were in the conference room, sitting around the table, while the technical services guy plugged in the speakerphone. "Okay, we just had the number forwarded to here, and we have a trace going. If he calls from a cell phone, we'll need to triangulate where it comes from."

Nancy looked at Ned. "He'll be able to hear if it's a speakerphone," she said.

He looked down at the table. "As soon as we have the trace, hang up," he said, quietly. "As soon as we have it. Nancy."

"I promise."

When the phone rang it startled all of them, even Parrish, who was standing at the door with his arms crossed over his chest. Nancy picked up the phone and looked at it for a moment, her hand shaking, before she pressed the button and brought it to her ear.

"Hello?"

Ned could hear the screaming from across the room, and he launched across the table while the blood drained from Nancy's face. The scream was choked off, the phone made a mechanical click in her ear, and she dropped it back onto the table.

"Son of a bitch," Bill muttered, his face in his hands.

On the other side of the room, the tech shook his head. "It was a cell phone call, we can see which tower it came from, but..."

Ned put his hand on Nancy's cheek, tilted her chin up, to see her eyes gleaming with tears. She pressed her lips tight together and looked at him mutely.

"Bill," Ned said.

"Yeah," he replied. "Yeah, I'm ready."

\--

When the nurse was putting the IVs back in for the third time, Emily stood over her, her palms on her cheeks, their gazes locked. Jenny's cheeks were wet with tears. She winced and yanked the line out again, her face creased, and the nurse's expression became momentary exasperation.

"Jenny," Emily said. "Home?"

She nodded, and Jenny's mother, her eyes bloodshot and wet, ran her hand through her hair and met the nurse's eyes. "We're taking her out of here."

"She's dehydrated," the nurse said. "She needs rest."

"She can rest at home," her mother said. "She's... if that's all she needs."

The nurse shook her head. "We've already... you need to bring her back here, to have the stitches removed, and she needs counseling."

During their whole conversation Emily stood over her sister, still, looking down into her eyes. Jenny, a drop of blood sliding down her bruised arm, rested her fingers over Emily's.

"Let's take you home."

\--

Nancy lay on a lower bunk in the crib, her knees drawn up tight to her chest, her cell phone next to her pillow. She looked at her watch, wiped her wet cheek, and picked up the phone.

"Hello?" George answered sleepily.

"Hey," Nancy said, trying to laugh, but the sound just came out pained. "Hey, I'm sorry for calling so late."

"It's okay," George said, and yawned. "You okay?"

"Not... not really," Nancy said, rolling onto her back, looking at the latticework of metal joins above her head. "But I'll be okay once Ned gets back."

"And where is Mr. Nickerson?"

"Probably at a sex toy shop, by now," Nancy said. "I hope."

"Okay, Nan, that is way too much..."

"Tracking down leads for a case."

"Oh you silly, naive girl," George said, and yawned again. "That's what they call it, but we all know it's a lie."

Nancy reached up and traced the curve of a metal coil with the tip of her finger. "Just promise me that you won't go out alone," she whispered. "Not until we've found this guy."

"I can—" George bit back the rest of it, but Nancy could hear it in her head anyway, her own constant refrain. _I can take care of myself. I'll be fine._ "Okay."

She closed her eyes. "Thanks," Nancy said. "I'll let you go back to sleep. Give Mollie a kiss for me."

"We're having a blast," George said, "but I think Mollie really misses you guys."

\--

"Sure, I've seen him," the cashier said, a gum-snapping girl with a stud under her lower lip. "Bought four sets of handcuffs, the serious ones. Asked me if I was doing anything later."

"Did you two set up a meeting?" Ned asked, hoping against hope, while Bill investigated a display promising genuine Spanish fly.

"He's not exactly my type," the girl replied, and snapped her gum again. "Which was too bad."

"And that's all he bought."

She nodded. "That was it."

"When?"

"An hour ago, maybe two... not that long ago. But then, things don't get busy in here until after ten, so."

Ned grabbed Bill by the sleeve and headed for the door. "Thanks," he called over his shoulder.

\--

McIntyre was waiting at the door when Ned came back in, and Bill was shoved backward into the wall when McIntyre stretched his arm and struck Ned's shoulder with the flat of his palm.

"What the fuck do you think you're doing, with this."

The precinct was dim, lit by intermittent desk lamps, and the pale rounds of faces as they gazed up, in unison, to see what the fuss was about. Ned glanced back at Bill, whose face was already flushing with anger, and then back at McIntyre.

"I. Asked you. A question."

Ned looked at McIntyre and thought about the girl in the hospital and the girl at her feet and the string of pale faces lining the conference room and the girl screaming into the phone an hour before, and he saw Nancy, her eyes red and bloodshot, her face pale, through the blinds at the windows, through the sea of suits around her.

"I'm finding this guy," Ned said, his jaw so tight that he had to force the words out. "I'm finding the guy who's doing this and I'm bringing him in and I'm not wasting hundreds of man-hours on a flawed profile and a witch hunt."

"I am the head of this task force," McIntyre said. "I am the one who should have been kept up to date on your movements. You aren't."

"I guess the captain didn't see it that way."

"You went behind my back."

Bill glanced back and forth between the two of them. A few of the guys had already pushed their chairs back, perched on the edges, their eyes widening. Nancy, behind the glass, pale cheeks, swimming eyes. A pale face in a line of pale closed faces.

Ned's fingers closed into his fist.

"Look, I don't care who's standing there in front of the cameras when we catch this guy. I don't care if you're the face telling everyone that everything will be all right, the wicked witch is dead. I don't care. If you're angry about this, fine. You don't have to be part of it. But what you need to do is stay, the fuck, out of my way. We already know he has another girl, and we have a chance to find her. Don't, don't, make your ego get in the way of that."

\--

Emily slept beside her.

Jenny stifled the sob in the closed fist over her mouth. Every light was on. Her bedroom light, the closet light, the desk lamp, the globe in the hallway. And Emily, a teddy bear under one outstretched arm, had managed to fall asleep anyway, but Jenny felt like she would never sleep again.

She listened until her parents' hushed voices faded, until she could hear her father's measured breathing, until the house was still and everything was so quiet, so quiet, until she could hear the foundations settle and almost feel the moths beating their heavy wings against the window and almost see the face she prayed, prayed she would never see again.

For an hour she lay stock-still, keeping her breath so quiet. Then she leaned over and kissed Emily's forehead and slow, so slow, crept down the stairs, turning on every light as she went, keeping her fingers on the wall when she could, keeping away from the wavering reflection of the windows, and found her father's shotgun.

\--

"The cell phone tower is here."

The tech tapped on a red flashing point, on the map, on the screen, and Ned nodded, taking a sip of his fifth cup of coffee of the night.

Bill tapped on another point. "The toy shop he hit is here."

"But would he have stayed, after? Knowing that we could probably track the cell phone? Whose was it?"

"Candace Short's. Called her parents' house; they haven't heard from her."

"So he probably has her. So she's probably the one..."

Nancy closed her eyes and hung her head and Ned put his hand over hers before he turned back to the computer. "But she was screaming," Nancy muttered.

"Jenny was gagged. Of course. The other girls would have been gagged. She was somewhere that her screaming wouldn't matter." Bill ran his hand through his hair.

"If you were him." Ned looked at the computer screen. "If you were him, where would you be right now."

"Somewhere safe," Nancy said.

"She could still be alive."

Nancy looked at her watch and then back at Ned. "She could be," Nancy said, but she didn't meet his eyes. "She could be."

\--

In the basement Jenny crept between the brittle cardboard boxes of childhood games and plastic-wrapped quilts, the camping equipment and washer and dryer, the gun shaking in her hand. The cell phone in the other. Her fingers shook, and her hand could barely stand the weight of the gun.

She backed herself into a corner and slid down the wall, her hands in front of her, her palms resting on her thighs. In a few hours, in a few, when the sun came up...

She looked down at the gun and flicked the safety off, her face clenching at the soreness that flared in her palm. Her wrist was scraped raw, bruised, her heels, the inside of her right thigh.

And he was still out there.

Her eyes filled with tears and she turned the gun up until she was looking down the barrel, the butt still resting on her upper thigh, almost lazily. Do this and he will never hurt me again. Do this and he will never.

Then she thought of her sister sleeping upstairs, and remembered the impassioned pleading, the assurance that only she stood between him and his next victim. If she had been able to so easily creep through the house.

She twisted her hand until the gun was pointed over to her left and sighed, her face wet with tears.

\--

"Nan."

Her fingers moved first, sliding over the surface of the table, then her arm, and then she tilted her face back to find him. "Hey," she said softly. "I'm sorry. I just."

Ned nodded. "Bill and I, we're going out, to see..."

Nancy pushed her chair back, but stayed seated. "Do you want me to come with you," she said, rubbing her eye with her right fist, and then the rest was swallowed in a yawn.

He shook his head. "Singleton's gonna take you to the hotel."

At that her gaze snapped to his again, her eyes suddenly clear. "And you're coming."

He looked away. "I have to go see. Maybe. Maybe he's somewhere, and we."

Nancy let her chin drop to her chest. "I know," she whispered. "And I don't have a gun, and."

"And I want you safe."

When he kissed her he tasted like coffee, but she leaned into it anyway, sliding her arm up around his shoulders. When he pulled back she followed him to stand, kissing him again, slow and soft.

"I'll go," she said. "If you promise me that no matter what you'll get some sleep tonight."

He nodded. "I'll get some sleep," he said. "Now go."

\--

"Jenny."

His eyes were stinging when he looked at her. He had run from his bed to the door after he received her text message, was still in the loose pair of sweatpants he had fallen asleep wearing, his feet shoved hastily into a pair of ragged sandals. He had cut through all the stoplights, and now, now that she was standing in front of him, he felt like his heart would break.

She was stroking her thumb over his cheek when he saw the gun out of the corner of his eye, on top of the dryer. He kept his gaze on hers, though, afraid to move, afraid to speak again, afraid to almost breathe in case she drew in on herself, out of his reach.

Then she put her arms around him, and he hugged her immediately, tight to him, feeling her sob into his shoulder. She shook and he rubbed her back in tight circles over and over, waiting for her to speak, but she didn't.

"Jenny, it's okay, it's okay."

She pulled back and brushed her fists over her wet cheeks. Then she looked down at the floor, and when he followed her gaze he saw three sleeping bags, three pillows, three quilts.

"You want?"

She nodded, and only when he sat down, his legs crossed, on the sleeping bag closest to the window, did the briefest hint of a smile cross her face. She headed for the basement door and he pushed himself up to follow her, but she gestured for him to stay back.

She came back five minutes later leading Emily by the hand, a teddy bear tucked under her arm. Emily stopped when she saw him sitting there. "Hey," she said, softly. "Brian, what are you doing here."

Brian nodded at the pale silent girl at her side. "Jenny sent me a message. So I'm here."

Emily looked from Brian to her sister, to her sister's hand, then back at Brian. "Jenny, what are we..."

Jenny sat down on the middle sleeping bag, with her sister furthest from the door, and five minutes after exchanging a long glance with Brian, Emily was fast asleep again. Brian waited until he could hear her breathing before he touched Jenny's cheek.

"Jenny, are you okay," he whispered.

Jenny looked from him to the gun on the dryer, and Brian scrambled up for it. "This?"

She nodded and lay back down once it was beside him, folding her arms under her head, but she didn't close her eyes.

"Why can't you," he began, and closed his eyes for a second. "Did your throat get hurt, did something happen... why haven't you said anything," he said, and raised his gaze to hers, his eyes wet.

She rested her thumb over his lips for a moment before her own parted, and she took a few deep breaths.

"Not yet."

He pulled her into his arms and rested his chin on the crown of her head. "Okay," he said softly. "Okay."

\--

On any other night he would have loved it. The air had gone cool and clear, the city was asleep, and at any other time he would have made one last round before he made a beeline to her. But her house stood empty and she was in a hotel room with a man who wasn't him and he had never, never felt more frustrated than he did when Bill drove by the intersection the cell signal had come from and there was nothing there. Nothing there at all.

In a few of the seedier hotels, in a few of the likely corners and abandoned houses, they skirted around with guns drawn and radios at the ready, but found nothing. Wherever they were, wherever she was, if she was even alive, if she—

_She is_, he thought stubbornly, but it still didn't ring with any assurance.

The coffee had gone cold and the moon was painfully bright in the sky when Ned looked over at Bill. "One more round," he said. "Then I call dispatch and have some men sent to the river."

_For when he dumps her_, Ned didn't say, and Bill didn't ask.

\--

She woke to see him standing at the edge of the bed, tossing his pants at a chair and missing, cringing when they hit the floor, but he slipped under the covers without bothering to retrieve them, shivering against the freezing air coming out of the vent beneath the window. He punched the pillow and the springs creaked and she turned to him.

At the expression in his eyes she didn't bother to ask, just reached for him and pulled him into her arms. "Get some sleep," she whispered.

He slipped his hand under her shirt and his palm was warm against her side, the small of her back. "Okay," he told her, and dropped a kiss against her forehead.

\--

She had passed out.

Nothing had gone right, the entire night, not after he had seen the bitch at the bar, not after he had picked up the redhead, especially not once he had seen the patrol cars parked on the street outside his hotel. Knowing that the bitch was hearing the redhead scream, that was gratifying, but now.

Now he held a straight razor to her throat and she was limp under him, and this, this wasn't right at all. She wasn't drugged and if he didn't do this now, eventually she would wake up, and he would have to make plans, contingencies, account for things, feed her. And that he did not do, he did not hold them. Not like Jenny. But then Jenny had been special, and that horror in her eyes, that specific brand of shocked pain, seeing it just the once wasn't enough.

And the redhead, she was gone. There was no fear or pain in her eyes, no expression at all, despite the tight metal cuffs at her wrists, despite how hard he pulled the gag between her teeth, despite all of it. If he slashed her throat wide open now, it wouldn't, it wouldn't.

Unless he just saved her for tomorrow night.

He shoved her chin back with the heel of his hand, hard. No poison and no plastic sheets and the cuffs, his favorite cuffs, the ones he had used since the beginning, they had them. And the jewelry.

But not his knife.

She made a soft gurgling noise but her eyelashes didn't flutter and he pulled back to slap her. No poison. No poison. No spasm, no last breath, last gasp, no guarantee, nothing. Nothing. She was flashing his picture around and when he went hunting again tomorrow night it would be that much harder to find a place he hadn't hit before, someone else to bring back here and sate it.

The bitch was responsible. The bitch was responsible. She was.

He took the redhead's throat in both hands and squeezed until she choked against the gag, until her eyelashes fluttered up and she made the soft begging pleading noises, until the metal squealed in protest and she was writhing to get away from him, and then, then, it was enough. Her pulse hard under his palms.

Then it was enough.

\--

Emily was in the living room. Her teddy bear was on the couch beside her, and she was just finishing off a bowl of some multicolored and sugar-saturated cereal, when her mother came in.

"Hey Em."

"Hey," she said, scrambling off the couch to put her bowl on the counter in the kitchen.

"Sleep okay?"

Emily just nodded. "Okay," she said.

"Honey, where's Jenny?"

Her mother looked at her, eyes wide, after hearing the male voice call that down the stairs, but Emily looked altogether too calm.

"In the basement," she replied, curling up against an arm of the couch.

"Why," her mother began, in a whisper, but she went to the kitchen so fast she almost lost her balance, pulling open the door to the basement.

Brian blinked up at her from the sleeping bag, giving a weak wave. "Hi," he said, then looked over at Jenny, and put his index finger over his mouth.

Jenny's mother felt her legs go weak and slid down the wall, until she was sitting at the top of the stairs, her eyes gleaming, her hand trembling at her mouth.

"Hey," she mouthed back, but didn't look away from her daughter.

\--

She had her arm tucked between them, her fist loose just under her chin. Her eyelashes were thick on her cheeks, against the brown shadow of exhaustion and pain.

Ned heard the second knock and turned over to see Bill at the door, still in sweatpants and a white t-shirt.

"They've found her."

His voice was no louder than a whisper but Ned closed his eyes in pain and rested his palm against his forehead for a minute, his chest bare, and heard the door close behind Bill. Nancy moved next to him, stretching her legs between the sheets.

"Ned."

He turned back onto his side and wrapped his arms around her and held her to his chest for a long minute, and she didn't make a sound.

"Are you all right?"

She kissed the hollow of his collarbone. "I'm okay," she said. "Are you?"

"I will be," he sighed. "We have to go."

She nodded. "In a minute," she whispered.

\--

McIntyre wasn't in sight when Ned and Bill and Nancy walked in, and although he almost felt like he was spoiling for a fight, he was glad that they could get down to the morgue without anything else happening.

"I'm not finished with the autopsy yet," the ME said when they walked in, and Ned half-turned from the body. "But he's changed."

"Fluids?"

"No luck there. But look at this."

Ned and Bill stood over the body, Bill already slightly green, but they both looked at the marks showing on the girl's neck.

"He strangled her before she died."

The ME nodded. "On all the other bodies, the poisoning was only secondary, the throat cut was the immediate cause of death. In this case... he strangled her, and she didn't bleed out because that had already killed her."

"So her..."

The ME pulled back an eyelid to reveal a bloodshot eye and Bill turned away from the table, his palm over his mouth. "Petechial hemorrhaging."

"Any jewelry recovered?"

"Gone, like the rest. The same cuff marks on her wrists and ankles."

Nancy was sitting at Ned's desk when he came back up, drinking the coffee they had picked up on the way to the station house. "Him?"

Ned nodded. "I don't think I could take someone else doing this," he said. "Autopsy's not done yet. Maybe we'll get some trace evidence."

Bill snorted from his own desk. "Right," he said, looking down at the folders on his desk. "I am getting sick and damn tired of this."

Nancy rested her elbows on the desk and washed her face with her palms a few times, lightly, before she pushed his chair back and stood up. "I'm gonna go," she said.

"Where?"

"To see how Jenny's doing," she said. "And if you want to be my escort, that's fine."

Ned looked down at the stack of papers on his desk, and across at Bill's, and at the conference room, and her head was hung by the time he looked back at her. "It's okay," she said. "Singleton can go with me. There's still a cop at her house, right?"

Ned nodded. "If you don't see a patrol car parked across the street when you get there, call me immediately."

"I will," Nancy said, and reached up to give him a kiss. "I'll be back, we'll have lunch, and by dinner this guy will be in lockup."

Ned smiled and brushed her hair back. "Right," he said softly.

\--

Singleton was the one with the grid of faces, all vaguely similar, but Jenny identified the fifth without hesitation, and he went out to the porch to call in the order for the warrant.

It was the look on Jenny's face, the look on her sister's, the look on the boyfriend's that Nancy recognized as Ned's. They were afraid, and putting a face to their fear wasn't enough. Anything that came to Nancy's lips, any reassurance, wouldn't be the same as showing Jenny that he would never come near her again, never hurt her again.

After Nancy said her goodbyes and followed Singleton outside, Emily slipped out onto the porch and grabbed Nancy's hand.

"I told you she wouldn't run away from him."

Nancy knelt down until her gaze was on level with Emily's. "I know," she said softly. "You were right."

"We were in the basement last night. She's afraid... are you going to find who did this?"

"We're going to try. Why were you in the basement last night?"

Emily looked down. "I don't know," she mumbled. "Jenny had Daddy's gun..."

Nancy rubbed her hand over her face, hiding the sudden pained look. "You see that car across the street? The black and white one?"

"Police," Emily nodded.

"He's here to make sure that nothing happens to you or your sister or your family again."

"Okay," Emily said softly. "Are you going to come back and see us again?"

"Yeah, I'll come back. As long as you promise me to keep safe."

"I promise."

Nancy watched until Emily disappeared back into the house, then rubbed her forehead wearily. Singleton approached her, concern on his face.

"They've contacted a judge. We'll need to bring Jenny in for a lineup, and then he'll give us a warrant... but the main thing is, we need to find this guy."

"Yeah," Nancy sighed. "Let's pick up some lunch and get back to the station house."

Singleton pulled into the parking lot of a fast food restaurant, maneuvering the squad car into the drive-thru lane. Nancy bit her lip.

"Let's go inside."

"Do you know what Ned would want?"

"I know what he'd would want," Nancy confirmed, "but what do you think Bill likes from here? And is there anyone else waiting? Maybe we should get McIntyre a little something as a peace gesture?"

Singleton laughed. "I usually just get five of something, and if they're hungry enough they'll eat it no matter what."

"That's why you brought a woman." Nancy pushed her door open and stepped onto the pavement. "Call them or something, figure out what they want. I'm gonna go inside and look at the menu."

She stood apart from the line, scanning the choices, and had almost decided on a salad when she felt the hairs on the back of her neck begin to rise. She glanced down at her purse, slowly pulled her cell phone out and held it in her left hand. The squad car was still visible across the parking lot, Singleton's head bobbing as he talked to someone else.

"Are you—Nancy? Nancy Drew?"

All the blood drained out of her face. That voice. That voice. God. Everything froze, her fingers were cold around her cell phone, everything except her heart, which was suddenly racing, beating hard and heavy. She didn't want to look, she almost couldn't make herself turn, but she finally managed it by slow degrees.

He was wearing sunglasses and a ballcap and long sleeves in the summer heat. His lips turned up in a smile. Weak chin lined in stubble. "Must be a yes."

She pressed the speed dial button on her cell phone, slowly, without looking at it, then held it against her thigh. "What are you doing here?"

"I just thought I recognized you," he said. "Which was quite the lucky break. I've been trying to find you for a few days now."

"You have?" Her voice was trembling, the fear smothered by rage.

"You and your father."

"Why?"

"I'm being framed for a murder I didn't commit."

Nancy took a long breath, hissing through her teeth. "That must be terrible for you. I don't see where I come in."

"You can help me prove my innocence. You're not in bed with the cops... oh, except that you are. But with your father defending me, I'm sure I can beat this. I'm no murderer."

Nancy saw Singleton's car door swing open, out of the corner of her eye, and realized that she was close enough to become a hostage with a single swing of his arm. His hands were in his pockets, and she flinched when he pulled one out.

"Here," he said, extending a slip of paper, folded in half. When she didn't move to take it, he dropped it into her purse. "I'm sure you'll change your mind. But... after eleven o'clock tonight, I don't think I'll be around for any more negotiation."

"Negotiation?"

He took her wrist hard in his hand and squeezed it, drawing close, and she could smell sweat, even as she shrank back and stared at her pale reflection in the opaque lenses of his sunglasses. His lips pulled back in a snarl.

"Don't be late," he hissed. "Or someone else will pay for it."

He loosed his fingers and flung her wrist away from him and walked through to the other door, just as Singleton walked in, and Nancy snapped the cell phone to her ear, the first tear streaking down her cheek.

"Him, it's him, it's him," she shrieked to Singleton, and as he shocked stood with his hand on the butt of his gun she pointed frantically. "The guy who just left. Now!"

"Nancy!" Ned was shouting into her ear, and she brushed her hair back and took a long breath before she answered, Singleton flinging the door open and breaking into a run in the parking lot.

"He was here," she gasped into the phone, and Ned inhaled sharply. "He was here, you need to pull the security footage, you need to get someone here to dust the note, he grabbed my wrist, he was in—he was in sunglasses, he had long sleeves, and—he was—"

"Nancy, where's Singleton—"

"He's chasing him, out in the parking lot, I couldn't, oh fuck, Ned—"

"I will be _right there_, you need to get somewhere safe—"

"He, Singleton has the car keys, I can't, I can't get away from here, what if he—"

"Dispatch," Ned called over his shoulder. "Need patrol to—Nancy, where are you."

"We're at... it's the corner, over there, hell." She pressed her hand against her forehead and reeled off the address.

"Singleton back yet?" Ned asked, after he called it over to dispatch. "Is he there with you yet?"

"Not yet," Nancy said. "Are you still coming?"

"I'm still coming, baby, there are cars on the way. Are you all right? Can you do something for me?"

"Yeah." She ripped a napkin out of a dispenser and brushed it over her cheeks. "I can do something."

"Go to the manager, ask about the security tapes. I will be there in five minutes."

Ned arrived three and a half minutes later, riding the siren the entire way, while Nancy was talking to the manager, confirming that the cameras were actually hooked up to recorders and that he could get them the tapes. Ned brought a uniform in with him and instructed him to deal with the process, then took Nancy's arm and led her out to the squad car. She leaned heavily on him until they were alone, and then he wrapped his arms around her and held her close.

"I can't believe he would have been that stupid," Ned breathed into her hair.

"To come after me in broad daylight?" Nancy squeezed her eyes shut.

"To come after you at all," Ned corrected her, rubbing his hand over her back. "You're Nancy Drew, for God's sake. That's like challenging Superman to a pistol duel at sunrise."

She laughed despite herself and ran her fingertips over her closed eyelids. "You got some gloves with you, Nickerson?"

They sat in the back of the squad car with Nancy's purse between them, as Ned put on gloves and poked around inside it. "This it?"

"Has to be," Nancy replied. "Same grocery list paper, same orange and white kitten..."

He unfolded the paper carefully. "It's an address, in the warehouse district," he said, then reached into the front seat. "Dispatch, I need cars immediately..."

Nancy upended her purse in the back seat and went through everything, every tube of lipstick and receipt and spare coin, tossing them back in one by one, until she was satisfied that he hadn't managed to drop something else in or take anything else out. Ned finished his orders and signed off on the radio, then turned to her again.

"What did he say?"

"He said..." Nancy raked her hair back from her face. "Can we do this at the station house? My skin keeps crawling..."

"That's fine, that's fine... want anything for lunch?"

"I'm not hungry anymore," she said softly, with a watery smile.

\--

"Has Singleton come back yet?"

Ned shook his head and brushed a lock of hair out of her face, his gaze steady on hers. "He called in, though. He lost Nash."

She set her mouth. "Then you know I have to go tonight."

They were on the lower bunk, his customary bed in the crib, in the dark. On their sides, facing each other, her knee bent, her leg resting over his side.

He rested his palm against her cheek and she nuzzled into his hand, softly. "You know I'm not going to let you go," he whispered back.

She sighed. "Can we just fast-forward through this argument and get to the end, where you realize that I'm not willing... to go to some other girl's house, and see another Emily and another Brian and another Jenny. He said someone else would pay for my not being there tonight."

"Yeah, we can fast forward through this," he murmured. "And it ends the same way. I am not letting you out of my sight tonight."

She closed her eyes. "Ned, please," she said, and her voice was shaking. "I can't be responsible for this happening to another person."

"Do you honestly think—Nancy, he would have all the responsibility for anything that happens tonight. Not you. You can't change what he's going to do by risking your life. You and I both know that he knows you're with me, he knows that you're telling me all of it right now, and he'd never take the risk of actually showing up, whether you're there or not."

"But there's still a chance."

He leaned forward until his forehead was resting against hers. "The only chance is that you, Nancy, you wouldn't walk away from this. I'm not letting you do it."

She cried out in frustration, swinging her fist against his chest. "Dammit," she snarled. "If it's me or someone else—"

He slipped his fingers under her chin and tilted it back so he could find her eyes. "It's not you or someone else. It's you and someone else. If this is his little game, it's not going to stop with you, and we both know that."

She sighed. "If you won't let me do this, and don't think I'm conceding anything—"

"Of course not."

"Then let me try something else."

He searched her eyes. "I really don't like the sound of that."

"You haven't even heard it yet."

"I haven't been with you for seven years without knowing when to be nervous."

Nancy looked down. "We still have his cell phone number, right?"

"Nancy—"

"And if he picks up, and I can talk to him long enough, we can triangulate and find him and it'll all be over with. Tonight."

"That's if his cell phone's even on. And if he's kind enough to stay there until we get there."

She sighed. "Take it or leave it, Ned."

"So I can either let you go to a meeting with a serial killer, or let you talk to him on the phone, when the last time his phone call consisted only of his current victim's screams."

"I think we should call him as soon as possible. He'll be off guard."

He sighed. "Well, we do need him in here for a lineup, and if we can catch him with the knife on him, the case'll be open and shut."

"See? If you don't let me put myself in peril, I'll just have to solve the case for you."

Ned raised his hands in a mock-weighing gesture. "Let's see. Have Carson murder me when he gets back to town, or close the case tonight. I think you've found a solution we can both live with."

"I try," she said, leaning forward to give him a kiss.

Even so, once they were all in the conference room, her fingers started to tremble. "Same as last time," the tech said, and she nodded.

"Okay."

Ned was holding her hand under the table as she dialed. She could swear that everyone in the room was holding their breath, as it rang once, twice, through the speaker.

"Chicago Police Department... now who could this be."

"You wanted to talk to me earlier."

"Yes, you. Not you and a room full of cops. And... did you lose the address I gave you?"

"I didn't lose it."

"So you must be too busy to take on a new case."

"I don't defend guilty people."

"Pick up the phone, Nancy. I can tell I'm on speakerphone."

Ned's fingers tightened on hers, but she took the phone out of the cradle anyway, stabbing the button with her knuckle. "You're off."

Ned leaned his head in close to hers. "I thought maybe we could have a third to our little party, but if you won't be coming..."

"Not a chance in hell."

"Then maybe I'll just let her say hi. I don't know if I should, though... you haven't done a damn thing for me, Nancy."

"I never will."

She heard the rip of tape, the gasp of breath, and then the girl's scream. "Nancy! Nancy, please, he—"

Then the smack of a palm against skin, the muffled gasp, and tears standing in Nancy's eyes. She startled at the click and the harsh buzz of the dial tone.

"It was Nikki," she said, softly, the phone still to her ear. "He has Nikki Masters."


	5. Chapter 5

"If I had just grabbed him."

"You can't think that way."

Nancy turned a furious glare on Ned when Singleton spoke up. "If I had just been able to catch up with him—"

"No, I was right there, all I had to do was hold him another second—"

"Nancy, we know he probably had a fucking knife in his pocket and he would have slit your throat right there—"

Captain Parrish shouldered the door open and walked back into the conference room. "All right," he said sharply. "This isn't doing a damn bit of good. Where did the trace go?"

The technician shook his head. "We have it narrowed down to a four-block radius, we have the cell towers the call used, but that's not saying much. We're almost sure that last time, he was in a car..."

Ned, his face still flushed from arguing with Nancy, turned to the technician. "Anywhere near the same place we heard from him last time?"

"Hang on a second, let me check."

Nancy pushed back her chair and stalked out of the room, and Ned pushed back his chair to follow.

"I'll come get you when we figure out if the call came from the same place," Bill called.

The station had a wide courtyard in the back, from the days when policemen still rode out on horses, but over time the courtyard had been surrounded by buildings even taller than the station. The ground was littered with cigarette butts; most cops and secretaries came out here to smoke or take a breath, to stare at the bald patches of grass on the blasted ground and try to forget the latest interrogation session, the last blown case. Nancy was standing there, staring across the yard at the checkerboard pattern of cinder blocks on the opposite building, and her mouth was trembling.

He stood there for a long moment, watching her. Ten feet away from them stood a scarred and weather-beaten picnic table, but Nancy still stood, impatiently tapping her foot on the sloping saddle of concrete around the back door, her face orange under the light. Her eyes were gleaming.

"Nikki Masters."

Ned nodded, but didn't say anything.

Nancy held her fist against her mouth, and drew in a breath that almost sounded like a sob. "Why the hell do I feel responsible."

"You already know the answer to that." Ned crossed the ten feet to the picnic table and sat down on the table top, with his feet on the bench, his elbows resting on his knees. "We're exhausted and this was probably the worst thing we could have heard tonight..."

She nodded and took a single step toward him, which he noticed but let pass without comment. "I feel so fucking powerless," she said quietly.

"And you don't like feeling that way." He let a small wry smile cross his face. "Despite all evidence to the contrary."

Nancy sat down on the rough concrete with her knees bent, her chin resting on her folded elbows. "What the hell are we going to do?" she asked, meeting his eyes for the first time since the phone call.

"We're going to find her."

Nancy didn't answer, only looked down. "It's not supposed to be like this," she said quietly. "It's not supposed to go through me and touch other people. It's not supposed to leave me to watch."

"And it won't, this time."

She went on as though she hadn't heard him. "He took Jenny and made her help him, and he didn't kill her. Something about Jenny. Nikki looks a little like Jenny. Maybe." But her eyes were dull and downcast.

"He hadn't killed her yet. We have no way to know what he was planning, what he would have done if he'd come back to that room before she was found."

Nancy ran her hands through her hair and raked it away from her face, gasping in a breath. Ned pushed himself off the table and came over to her, squatted down before her and tilted her chin up until she met his eyes.

"Have you just given up?" she demanded.

Ned's jaw tightened for a second, but he shook his head. "Of course I haven't given up, and I won't give up until there's nothing left to hope for." He touched her hand. "Look, we're going to go back in there, and go over everything until we find the one thing he's overlooked, and we'll find Nikki..."

"What if he hasn't overlooked anything."

Ned cracked his first smile. "He made his first mistake when he decided to challenge you," he murmured, and traced his fingers over her cheek. "You know that, right?"

Something lit in her eyes at that. "He's just cocky," she replied. "Cocky won't save Nikki. But he hasn't been this good forever."

Bill pushed open the back door and poked his head out, and Nancy and Ned turned to look at him as one.

Bill shrugged a little, slightly, his eyes downcast. "The calls came from opposite parts of town."

"Which means we can eliminate both from the search pattern," Nancy replied.

Ned hugged her before they went back inside, but after a murmured explanation Nancy vanished in the direction of the file room, and Ned went back to the conference room to find Captain Parrish on the phone.

"I just called the FBI profiler. And McIntyre."

Ned groaned and slumped into one of the uncomfortable chairs, his face shining with exhaustion. "Bill, do you have the aspirin?"

"Right here," his partner replied, tossing the bottle over.

Nancy found the file room unoccupied, save by a bank of humming computers and an archaic system that made little sense to her. She typed in a few search parameters, and as she waited for the system to respond, she felt the hairs rise on the back of her neck.

When she turned around, she was still alone in the room.

Nancy turned around again, rubbing the back of her neck with her palm, muttering, "I'm safe here, I'm safe here." The fingers of her other hand tapped an irregular rhythm on the hard seat of her chair as the results began to fill the computer screen. "Too many," she muttered irritably.

The technician swung open the door of the room, and Nancy jumped, a scream rising to her lips before she saw who it was. "Sorry," he apologized.

"No, it's okay," Nancy said, hoping he couldn't tell she was slightly breathless. "Look, you wouldn't mind helping me out with something..."

Ned was starting to count back on his fingers, trying to remember when he'd last had a full night of good sleep, when Nancy walked in, her arms full of files. "What's that?" he asked.

"Oh, this isn't even all of it," she said, letting them fall to the table with a loud thump. "The rest are apparently in other precinct houses, but these were the only ones I managed to find."

"And they are?" Bill asked.

"Unsolved rape-homicides for the year before we have Nash's first confirmed victim."

Which will take the rest of the night to even go over, Ned thought, but he didn't say anything. The rest of the night for him to go over by himself, maybe, but Bill would be helping, and he had even money on Nancy finding the connection first.

"With evidence connecting him?"

Nancy nodded slowly. "With evidence we get a pattern of behavior, and a way to connect him to all the other crimes he's committed, this year and all the rest..."

"And Nikki?" Bill asked, voicing Ned's concern, the one he hadn't dared to say himself.

Nancy set her mouth. "I have an idea about that," she said softly, but her voice was firm.

Bill and Ned exchanged a glance, but didn't say anything else, and when Nancy sat down at the table and flipped open the first file, Ned let his hand rest over hers for a moment before he did the same.

Three hours and four pots of coffee later, Nancy and Ned and Bill and Singleton and McIntyre and everyone else they'd been able to find were all around the table when she smacked her fist into the top. "Here. Right here."

Ned shoved his chair away from the table immediately, coming over to her, to peer over her shoulder. "What is it?"

"A prostitute, found a year before Nash's first known victim. Strangled and found in a dumpster behind a hotel. DNA... was recovered at the scene!" Nancy was half-standing, her eyes wide as she stared down at the file. "He strangled the latest one. What if this one was just the first?"

"Why this one?" McIntyre asked. "What makes you think it's this one and not any of the other," he gestured at the stack of files on the table.

"I don't know," she murmured. "No obvious suspects in the file. We have a map of all the previous crime scenes, right?"

Ned showed her the map, covered in pins, and she traced the spiral. "The first one... if she was the first, she was found here."

"It would make sense."

The profiler stood in the doorway, watching them, and the team looked up as one. "He has a comfort zone, and that hotel definitely falls in his comfort zone."

Ned's fingers were twitching. "It's the best lead we have right now," he said, slowly. "We go flash this guy's picture around, see if we get any hits."

"And we have to do something," Nancy murmured.

"Not we. You're going to stay here with Singleton."

"Ned," she sighed.

"Nancy, I mean it. All we're doing is canvassing, anyway."

"I'll come with you," the profiler said.

Nancy gave Ned a pointed glare, but he shook his head. "No. You're staying here."

"And what, exactly, is so dangerous about flashing this guy's picture around?"

Ned pulled Nancy with him out of the room, away from McIntyre's too-interested earshot, back into a dark hallway, and stood close to her. "Just do this for me," he whispered. "Look, if we find Nikki, you are the first one I'll call, and you can be there, but Nancy... this isn't some embezzler, this is some sicko who's already expressed an interest in playing some game with you. I want you here. I want you safe."

"I'll be safe with you."

Ned smiled. "There was a time when I believed that was true," he murmured. "But Nancy... promise me you'll stay here."

She drew him down to her for a kiss. "Go," she sighed. "I'll wait here like some war bride just because you don't trust me to take care of myself."

"You know it isn't like that."

She smiled. "I know."

She stood at the window, watching them go. They didn't bother to put on the siren or the lights, and she rested her palm against the glass before she walked back to the conference room and slumped at the table, the files still in chaos and spread across the surface, where Singleton was waiting.

"Ned made me promise to keep you in my sight."

Nancy sighed and started gathering the files. "Yeah, well... does that mean if McIntyre calls an all-units, that maybe I could just ride with you to the scene?"

Singleton chuckled. "What is it with you?"

"I just want to see this guy put away, with my own eyes."

Her cell phone rang, then, and Nancy checked the caller ID, fully expecting to see Ned's name there. The one she did see, made her blood run cold. "Shit," she breathed, as the phone rang again. With shaking hands she hooked the phone up the same way they had earlier, to the recording equipment and loudspeaker, while Singleton stared at her.

"Hello."

"I thought he'd never leave."

"Why are you calling me?"

"Well, I know the little... date... we had scheduled, didn't quite work out. Maybe you want a raincheck."

"Not..." Nancy cleared her throat. "Not really."

"Even if Nikki really wants to see you?"

Nancy gripped the desk so hard her fingers turned white and took a long shuddering breath before she replied, "What do you want?"

Henry chuckled into the phone. "I've decided to make this very easy for you, Nancy. There's a blue car parked a block west of the station, and the keys are in the ignition. There's a prepaid cell in the car. One minute after I hang up, I will call that cell phone. If you don't pick up, well..."

Nancy stared down at the speaker in the center of the table, speechless, pale.

"Let's just say that I'll give Nikki a little more of my undivided attention. You really should hear her, Nancy. She can't stop talking about how she's sure you'll come for her, that I'm nothing compared to you. It's getting very irritating."

"I'm sure it is."

Henry's voice hardened. "No tricks, either. I want us to have some quality time together, not like earlier. You and you alone, doll."

"Where am I going?"

"I'll tell you when you get in the car. One minute." He hung up the phone.

Nancy pushed back from the table so fast that her chair fell over backwards, hitting the floor hard. "Shit," she muttered again, and Singleton's eyes were so wide.

"You know you can't do this."

"I know I have to," she returned, jerking her phone away from the cord, leaving it on the table. "Okay. Okay. One minute. I need something... I need some way to tell you where I go, so you can tell Ned."

Singleton's gaze went distracted for a second, and then he shoved back from the table and headed for a metal cabinet out in the bullpen. "We used to have two-way pagers, for when the radios would be too loud... that, or an earpiece. Earpiece?"

Nancy snorted. "He'll see that. What about the two-way?"

"Here," he said, shoving it into her hands, and quickening his stride to keep up with her. "Shit. Ned is going to kill me. This guy is going to fucking—"

"Shut up," Nancy muttered. "God."

Singleton stopped short, just outside the line of sight from the front windows, and knelt down. He unstrapped the gun from his ankle holster.

"I think this counts as a trick."

"I don't care. You're going to take it."

Nancy waited a second before she knelt down and strapped it around her own ankle. "Full clip?"

He nodded. "Send me a page when you get there, and I'll put out an APB immediately."

Nancy's fingers tightened against her palm, her nails biting white crescents into the heel of her hand. "All right," she said. "All right. Oh God. If I—"

Singleton shook his head. "Keep him covered as soon as you get out of the car."

"Tell Ned I love him, if," Nancy said, and shoved her hair back out of her face, unable to continue. "I have to go. I have to go."

She gestured for him to stay back, out of the line of sight from the door, and when she reached the front double doors she broke into a run. Her entire body was shaking, and the gun was heavy against her ankle.

_Nikki. It's for Nikki. Ned must be in the wrong place... why was I so stupid. I sent him away from me, and he would never have let me do this..._

Her fingertips barely brushed the handle of the car door, parked on the side of the deserted street and just outside the halo of the streetlight, when she had a sudden vision of a massive fireball, Nash's last trick before vanishing completely with Nikki, and Ned would lose it.

The cell phone was in the front seat, flashing with each ring, and Nancy took a breath and held it, almost wincing as she popped the door handle, ducked inside and grabbed the cell phone.

"Hello?"

\--

Ned and Bill were about to walk into the next hotel, photo at the ready, the profiler trailing behind, when Ned's cell phone began to ring. "Go ahead," he waved them inside, and went back to the patrol car.

"Nickerson," he answered.

"Ned..."

Ned caught his foot tapping against the floorboard and forced himself to keep still. "I'm here."

"He called here after you left."

Singleton's voice was shaking, and Ned stared, unseeing, out into the night. "Where is he?"

"I don't know."

"What did he say to you?"

"He didn't talk to me. He talked to Nancy."

"Why, the fuck—"

"He called her cell phone, and she answered, and we have the conversation on tape here because she plugged it in, but he told her that he left a car parked a block away and she went—"

"_What_—"

"She—Ned—"

"You let her go?"

Singleton's voice became defensive. "This is Nancy we're talking about. I didn't let her do anything but take my spare gun and a two-way pager so she could tell me where she ends up."

"And why the hell would she do something this incredibly foolish?"

"He said he'd hurt Nikki," Singleton said.

Ned sighed. His eyes were gleaming, but he could feel himself beginning to close off, because if he thought about this, about what she had done, he'd lose all control he had.

"Okay. She has a two way pager and a gun."

"I'm so sorry..."

"I know," Ned said, not unkindly. "We're already downtown. The second, the _second_ you hear from her, I want you to call me on the—no. He might have a scanner. Call me on my cell, like you just did, and if you don't hear from her in—" Ned checked his watch, fighting to keep himself anywhere near calm. "If you don't hear from her in fifteen minutes, meet us downtown and we'll start looking for her."

"He could be at the warehouses, couldn't he?"

"Send a unit out there, but I doubt it. Like Nancy said, anywhere we've known him to be, he won't be there. We've already gone through four hotels, and... son of a _bitch_," Ned muttered, pounding his fist into the dashboard. "Son of a fucking bitch, I can't believe this. She _knew_..."

"She told me..."

"What," Ned asked, when Singleton trailed off.

"She said... to tell you that she loves you..."

Ned felt like he couldn't breathe, and he pushed open the car door and rested his feet on the sidewalk, his elbows on his knees. "Fifteen minutes, okay?"

"Right."

Ned punched the button to end the call and forced himself to breathe, while the cars passed, a series of headlights in the night. He could feel his heart beating. He'd been able to feel his heart beating when the hospital had called him and asked him if he was next of kin for Edith and James Nickerson, that they had such terrible news, and she had been there, and she was everything he had left in the world.

_If I lose her._

He shook his head roughly and gasped in a breath before he set his jaw and stared into the bright lobby, without seeing it. The hotel was business class, the kind of hotel Henry Nash would have stayed in during one of the conferences, somewhere quiet.

Ned forced himself to stand, to walk stiffly to the back. The dumpsters weren't in plain view. The girl had been found here, nine years before, and Ned had saved this one for the last, in the hopes that Henry would have been shaken up enough by their finding Jenny to go back to somewhere he'd find safe and familiar. Maybe the first place he'd ever killed.

Ned's radio crackled to life. "Hey, Nickerson."

"Hey," Ned replied, his voice low and rough.

"Need you to come up here."

"On my way."

\--

The low gas indicator light on the dash was glowing up at her. Nancy kept glancing at it, between the speedometer and the road ahead of her. She had ten minutes to get there, or he had promised that Nikki would regret it.

Sliding to a gentle stop at a streetlight, Nancy pulled out the two-way pager and glanced up at the dome light, which she couldn't bring herself to flip on. For all she knew, any second the prepaid cell would ring, Nash would call the whole thing off, and they'd find Nikki in a week, all because she hadn't obeyed his every instruction.

The cell phone stayed silent.

The pager keyboard was laid out like a computer keyboard, but the keys were incredibly small, and Nancy could only afford to glance down a few times, wincing at her errors. She typed in the street intersection he'd given her, repeating it just in case, and hit the send key.

When the cell phone rang, her nerves were so high that she had to bite back a scream.

"Hello?"

"I've changed my mind."

Nancy's eyes were swimming, and she blinked to clear them, feeling two tears trace their way down her cheeks. "All right," she said, her voice somehow close to even.

"You ready?"

"I would be, if you'd put enough damn gas in this thing."

"Didn't want you getting any ideas."

Nancy swiped at her eyes. "Where do you want me to go."

"Same place as I said. Pull into the driveway at house with the black shutters and turn off the engine."

Nancy turned onto the street and looked down at the pager, feeling the weight of the gun against her ankle, and breathed a silent prayer.

_Ned, I love you_, she thought, and blinked another set of tears.

Then she pulled into the driveway, reaching down to loose the gun, and its mass was reassuring. She found the safety and thumbed it off. A shadow resolved itself into a man, standing in the carport five feet away from her. He pushed himself off the wall and started toward her, and Nancy shoved the pager between the seat and the center console.

He opened the door. "Hello again."

Nancy pulled in a long breath, and the night was dim and humid around her, in the deep night between two broken streetlights. Weeds stood in the yard, high as her knees, and the headlights were glaring back at her from the garage door. Nancy flipped them off with her second try, her fingers shaking ever so slightly. With supreme effort she kept her hand steady.

"Hello."

She hadn't handled a gun in a while. She and Ned had been to the range a few times, when he was still in the academy, and she had scored almost as well as he. When they were standing together, side by side, in perfect conditions, at least. This was less than ideal, but she kept hearing Nikki in her head, and it galvanized her, because maybe Nikki was inside, maybe she could...

"Leave the keys in the car and come with me."

This close, his eyes were cold, and Nancy rose slowly, keeping the gun out of sight and close to her hip. "Where are we going?"

"Away from here, because you probably called your boyfriend and told him to come straight here. So we're leaving."

"I didn't."

Henry stopped. "You want me to search the car?"

Nancy paused for a second too long, and he nodded. "That's what I thought. Get in that car."

Nancy swallowed and raised the gun. "No," she said.

Nash moved quickly, and even though Nancy tracked him with the gun, suddenly he was holding one on her as well. "So you don't trust me."

Nancy laughed, and the sound was hard and sarcastic. "No. Where's Nikki?"

"Somewhere that isn't here. And if you ever want to find her, you'll get in the car."

Nancy's heart ached when she thought of the pager, tucked between the seats, behind her, in the faint orange glow from the open car door. She hadn't even bothered to close it behind her. The gun tracked down to his kneecap, because if she could just manage to disable him, get him distracted by the pain, every minute she spent here would bring Singleton and Ned and help a minute closer to her...

"Don't even think about it."

Nancy pulled the gun back up, to point it at Nash's head. "Tell me why I'm here."

Henry brought his other hand up to cup the butt of the gun, keeping it trained steadily on her. "You know what? Get in the fucking car and we'll talk. Until you're blue in the face, if that's what you want."

She saw the expression in his eyes and swallowed hard. "I'm not getting in that car with you."

Henry lunged toward her, and Nancy backed against the side of the car. An empty tank of gas, a gun in her hand, and she wasn't sure if she trusted her aim to kill him immediately, and even if she did, wherever Nikki was...

"Is Nikki even still alive?"

"Sure she is," Henry said, an edge in his voice. "Let's go see her. Get in the damn car, Nancy."

"Prove to me that she's alive."

He grinned. "Should've thought of that sooner, girlie."

"So you won't."

"Get in the damn car," he said again, and when he lunged at her Nancy tried to back away, but he caught the hem of her shirt in his hand, and Nancy's heart was beating so hard in her chest as she brought the gun up to rest against his stomach, and he smacked the muzzle hard against her temple. "Get in the fucking car, Nancy," he sang at her.

His image swam in front of her, and she heard the lonely wail of a siren in the distance, and didn't dare hope it was meant for her. "Since neither one of us are going anywhere, and I have a feeling that whatever you have in mind for tonight is going to require some amount of privacy..." she forced out, her voice far stronger than she felt.

"You'd be right about that."

"Why me?"

"You want to know?" He pressed the muzzle of the gun harder against her forehead, and she bit back a gasp, her finger tightening on the trigger. "Because when I did a little bit of research, I found out that you were the amazing one, the girl detective. People talk about you with awe. And this year, this year, your fiancé happens to be the lead detective on the case, and you're always there. It's not Nickerson at all, is it."

"Ned's not the lead detective on the case."

"What do you think you have to gain from lying to me about this? I saw the press conference."

Nancy began to shook her head, then remembered where the gun was and pressed her lips together. "He handled the conference, but he's not the lead detective."

"So what? I kidnapped Nikki to get to you, and I have you right where I want you. Now get in the _fucking car_, before I blow your brains out."

The wind shifted, and Nancy pushed the gun against his ribs. "I think we're stuck here."

He burst out into edged, angry laughter. "We're not stalling anymore."

She couldn't bring herself to fight him, but she did keep the gun pressed against his side as he led her, pulling her by the shirt toward the car. She stumbled, staring at the passenger door, and knew that if he managed to get her into the car, she was as good as dead.

He pulled a pair of cuffs out of his back pocket, snapping them open. "Don't want you getting any ideas."

She could feel her heart beating in her throat. "Fuck you."

"That comes later."

Her flesh crawled where it touched his, and she closed her eyes. _I'll die first._

"Let her go."

Ned's voice, even though at first she couldn't place it and almost thought she was hallucinating, but then Henry jerked back, and it had sounded so clear in the night, and she felt the twinned relief and despair at knowing Ned was there, and that he was in danger for as long as she was.

Her stomach somehow sank even lower, as Henry snaked his arm around her neck and jerked her in front of him. "Drop the gun," he hissed into her ear.

"No," she replied.

She could see Ned, the glint of his gun as he held it steady, pointing almost at her head, crouched nearly in the shadows. His chest was a black matte expanse of Kevlar, his face was like stone, and Nancy couldn't bring herself to look at him too long, afraid that his gaze would meet hers, afraid of what she'd see there.

"Let. Her. Go."

She closed her eyes. Henry's elbow was hard against her collarbone and his breath was warm against her ear, and she could feel him shake his head before she heard his response.

"They're going to have you surrounded," she told him, slowly twisting her hand until the muzzle of her gun was pointed at his upper thigh. "You can't cover all the angles."

She felt metal against her wrist, suddenly, and jerked it up before he could cuff her to him, her eyes flying open. She could almost feel Ned gasp.

"Don't do that again," she said, her voice harsh.

Henry was quiet, his breathing noisy. "That's it," he said, and Nancy took a deep breath.

Her night vision had been destroyed, and so had Nash's. The patrol car was black. Now she saw another shape on its other side resolve itself into McIntyre, another into Bill, and with each her heart rose practically into her mouth. McIntyre had his gun out, his arm extended, keeping Nash's head along with hers in the scope of his sight, but Nash kept moving, and Nancy moved with him, swaying against her will.

"Let her go."

Nash shook his head and the point of his jaw caught Nancy's cheek, the stubble scraping over her skin. "She goes with me," he called back, his voice hard. He pulled the gun between them, the muzzle pushing against her hair and into the point where her skull met her neck. "She goes with me or she doesn't go anywhere."

Ned's gaze was steady on Nash, but his gun hand was starting to tremble, and Nancy swallowed.

This was never supposed to happen, but just as it was never supposed to happen to her, it was never supposed to happen to Ned, either. In the time they'd been engaged, in the time she'd known him, he had somehow managed to become as precious to her as air or sun, the ring on her finger standing testament to the fact that he felt the same. He'd had enough tragedy in his life to last him for the rest of it, in one senseless moment, and here he stood, and if she didn't move he would witness another.

But the muzzle of the gun in the back of her head said otherwise, and if one of them took the shot and she wasn't protected by the flesh and bone of the killer wrapped too tight around her, she would become that final victim. Because it all had to end tonight, before Nikki had to endure another hour of this.

Nash's hand groped over her suddenly and she took an instinctual half-step back toward him, repulsed by his brush over her, then felt the metal circle her wrist. Left wrist, because he wasn't so stupid as to touch the hand holding her gun.

She groaned. Before, she'd had the option of somehow ducking out of his incredibly tight grip and rolling away while Ned and McIntyre took him down. Now, it was out of the question.

"Car," Nash mumbled directly into her ear, and Nancy shrank back away from him, tilting her head away from his. He jerked her roughly, making sure to keep her between himself and the officers.

"You don't want to do that," McIntyre called warningly, but Nash kept half-dragging her, until they had reached the driver's side door.

"Open it."

_If I get in that car... at least I'll see Nikki, at least I'll see her, before..._

Nancy glanced over at Singleton, wondering when he would tell Ned what her last words to him had been, wishing she'd had the time to say more. She paused with her fingertips brushing the handle, and saw Bill shake his head slightly.

_No. I'm not going like this._

She scissor-kicked Nash before she went down hard on her back, wincing at the impact. Somehow, somehow, he managed to stay upright, staring down at her with such hatred in his eyes, and their wrists still hung by the chain across the space between them, their gun arms extended, and Nash was in her sights. He was there, he was right there, but his chin was down, and from here she had no guarantees, and if he fell on her with the right pressure in the right place, he would not be the only one drawing one last breath tonight.

For an impossible length of time they stared, like that, and she could hear Ned and McIntyre and Singleton and Bill, a hundred mingled male voices shouting, shouting to stop, but she couldn't make it out. Everything was under water but her heart was racing in her chest, and the fear was all trembling adrenaline in her limbs.

His finger tightened on the trigger.

"Take the shot," she screamed, and the voices resolved themselves into one. Because they had to only injure Nash, because they had to find Nikki, and if they merely injured him he'd probably kill Nancy in retaliation, crawling to her with blood trailing behind him on the pavement just to shoot her until he ran out of bullets, then pound the butt of his gun into her head. And there was nothing she could do now, because what she wanted so badly, so very badly, was to pull her own trigger and shoot the motherfucker in the head.

Someone saved her the trouble.

Henry Nash's face dissolved in a coarse mist of bright red and Nancy screamed again, anguished, scrabbling back on her heels to push herself away from the corpse she was suddenly handcuffed to. Nash's gun fell loose to the pavement and she couldn't look at it, she was suddenly terribly aware of the warm weight on her face, the red gout of his blood. The pavement under her head shook as the running steps came toward her, and Nash's now nearly headless body fell, and then his chest was against her knee and she kicked his torso savagely, pulling the handcuff tight against her wrist until it was scraped raw and bleeding, trying to free herself.

"Nancy..."

Nancy opened her eyes to see Ned's face, pale and stricken, above hers, the circle of white faces further away, and she cried out when Ned gently tugged the cuff toward him, loosing the metal from her wrist. She pushed herself back on trembling legs, rising to sitting, and the moon cleared the clouds long enough for her to see the body huddled at her feet.

"Check for vitals," someone said distantly.

The world tilted, and then she was in Ned's arms, he was sitting on the pavement and she was getting the killer's blood all over him, it was smeared all over her shirt and face and in her hair as her legs hung loose and straight in front of her. But Ned had drawn her face to his and she could hear his voice in her ear, whispering something soothing, meaningless and light and hushing.

"Nikki," Nancy gasped out. "He didn't tell me where Nikki is."

Ned pushed back her hair, his fingers curling in the strands. "We found her," he whispered. "He poisoned her."

"She's dead?" Nancy could feel her voice rising, but she didn't know how to stop it, couldn't stop it anymore.

"We found a pulse and sent her to the hospital, and then we came straight here, baby..."

"Oh God," Nancy whispered, burying her face in her hands. "Oh God, Ned..."

"It's over."

\--

"She's doing well. Stable. She's not out of the woods yet, but she's doing better. We'll know more by the morning."

Nancy had cleaned herself up as best she could, and she stood at the foot of Nikki's bed in the emergency room at the downtown hospital. She knew she still had blood in her hair but she had demanded that Ned bring her here, after they had called for the medical examiner and the other officers at the scene had agreed to vouch for Henry Nash's bullet-ridden corpse. His captain had been chewing nails, but Ned had come back to her silently with the keys to the patrol car in his hand, and they had left without another word.

Nikki looked so pale and wan on the pillow, and Nancy walked stiffly over to her side, aware that most of the emergency room staff had made some excuse just to walk by here, just to see her. Even if reports hadn't yet been released, the gunshots and the sound of the siren had been enough to wake several of the neighbors from their beds, bring them to their porches to stand and stare with their bathrobes wrapped tight around them. Only a matter of time before one had the foresight to call one of the local news stations and give some spectacular story of a police shootout.

_I had the gun in my hand but I couldn't kill him._

"He's dead, Nikki," Nancy said, resting the backs of her fingers against Nikki's temple. "He's dead and gone, and he won't be hurting you anymore, and I'm sorry you were ever involved in this..."

The heart monitor beeped back at Nancy, but Nikki didn't move, and after a long moment Ned laced his fingers between hers, waiting until she hung her head and turned away. They passed Nikki's parents in the hallway, her mother frantic, her eyes wet, Nikki's father's mouth set in a thin line, so blind that they didn't see or register Nancy's presence before they were gone.

At Jenny's house, her mother had almost the same look of dull panic on her face, and when Nancy asked to see Jenny the corner of her eyes tightened.

"What's this about?"

"We just need to see her, ma'am," Ned said softly, and Mrs. Birch closed the door behind her, after the slightest nod.

Jenny came to the door a few minutes later, fear in her eyes, and whispered, "He got away, didn't he."

Nancy shook her head. "He's dead," she replied. "He's dead, he's gone, I saw it—"

Jenny started crying and Nancy reached for her, and they held each other until they could move again.

\--

George surrendered Mollie to their custody when she was still half-asleep, after Nancy promised they would have lunch and she'd tell her the whole thing. Nancy climbed in the back of the car with Mollie and cooed at her, and Mollie wagged her tail and licked Nancy's face until she coaxed Nancy's only smile of the entire evening.

Nancy untangled herself from the back seat once they were parked on the street in front of her house, but Ned gestured for her to stay back. "I'm gonna go in and check it out..."

"Okay," Nancy whispered, and sat down on the dew-soaked grass, stroking Mollie's face. The damp bled through her jeans and Nancy looked down at the bloodstained fabric, wondering if it would ever come out. When Ned had been gone for ten minutes, Nancy glanced toward the house, the facade dim and grey in the faint light, suddenly afraid. The house had stood empty, unobserved, and if Nash had planned a little backup, just in case...

Ned pushed the door open and Nancy almost screamed. "It's fine," he called, beckoning her inside.

Mollie bounded inside and Ned stood waiting at the back door, and when he loosed the security lock on the flap, she ran outside, barking happily. Ned walked toward Nancy, who looked down at her clothes, her fingers digging at the hem of her shirt. Where his hands had been. She shivered.

"I have to take a shower."

Ned nodded and slipped behind her to lock the door. "I'll go with you."

Under the water, Nancy stood facing him with her head down, and only then did she start trembling. Ned slipped his arms around her and held her to him, and she wrapped her arms around his waist. She could feel him rest his lips at the point of her jaw, but they both remained silent, the blood dripping from her unbroken skin.

"Okay?" he said finally, his voice low.

She looked up at him, gave him a watery smile. "I'm alive," she whispered. "I'm alive."

He linked his arm around her wrist, gently, and she winced when his fingers brushed the bruised skin. "You are," he murmured.

She stood motionless when he washed her hair, when he rinsed her skin, staring unseeing at the opposite wall. When he pulled back, she half-turned toward him again, her fingers twitching at her side.

"Nan."

She smiled and her fingers cupped his cheek. "I don't think I can go to sleep just yet," she whispered, before she pushed back the curtain and found a towel. By the time he turned off the water and followed, she was gone.

Her hair hung damp and curling over her shoulders as they went back out to the sectional, and the sky was turning pale blue when Mollie came back inside, her nose cool, and leapt up onto the couch to join them. Nancy patted her on the head, until she sat down, her eyes bright and tongue hanging out.

Ned flipped through the channels until he confirmed that there was nothing on, just infomercials and the bright chaos of music videos. He tossed the remote on the couch beside him, and Nancy folded her legs underneath her, tucking her bare chilled feet in.

"Nancy."

She turned to Ned, and she could see him, really see him for the first time since she had kissed him goodbye and watched him leave to find Nikki. And now he was the one trembling, his fingers dancing against his knee, his eyes dark.

"What happened today."

She shivered, her legs bare and the shirt hanging loose around her curves. "I'm sorry," she said, looking down. "He said—he said he'd hurt Nikki, and I had to go—"

"I know you did."

Mollie whimpered and nudged her nose against Nancy's hand, and Nancy petted her absently. Her eyes were wide when they caught Ned's again.

He sighed. "I don't know what I would do without you."

Nancy forced a shrug, but couldn't brush off his comment with some flippant remark, not with that expression in his eyes. "I've never been so afraid," she admitted, and her eyes were suddenly wet, and she choked back a sob. "I thought I might never see you again..."

He reached over and pulled her into his lap, holding her tight against him, her bent knees cradling his waist, and she buried her face in his shoulder. "Ned," she whispered, curving her fingers at the nape of his neck.

"Don't ever leave me," he murmured into her hair, his breath warm against her skin. "Promise me you'll never leave me again, Nan, I don't know what I'd do if you..."

"He was going to kill me."

Ned nodded, his fingers digging into her skin. "I thought we'd never get to you in time."

"You saved me."

She could almost feel him smile, his lips shaking. "You saved yourself," he murmured. "You had everything under control."

She pulled back, his image swimming before her when she shook her head. "All I kept thinking was that I had to find Nikki, and nothing else mattered, and..."

"And she's safe," Ned whispered, leaning forward to rest his lips against her earlobe. "She's safe, and Jenny won't spend the rest of her life looking over her shoulder, waiting for him, because of you."

"Because of us," she corrected him. "If he'd gotten me into that car..."

"You would have been dead," he nodded, and then he started shaking against her. "I thought I'd never get there fast enough, and if you..."

She kissed him then, hard, and felt Mollie nuzzle against her back, but she didn't care. Ned returned the kiss, harder, his fingers pulling tight in her hair, and Nancy gasped when they parted.

"Nan," he breathed, and she read the question in his hooded eyes, and she nodded.

"Take me to bed," she whispered.

The window was pale at the head of her bed when they came into the bedroom, and she climbed into his lap before he had a chance to lay down. Nancy's eyes were closed but she heard the familiar sound of Mollie's claws on the floor beside the bed, and Ned's fingertips slipped under the hem of her shirt, and Nancy tilted her head back.

"I don't ever want to lose you," he whispered into her collarbone, pulling her shirt up. His teeth brushed her skin. "It would have killed me before, but now..."

She ran her hand through his hair, pressing a kiss against the crown of his head. "He's dead," she murmured, and in the bright pale haze of sunlight, the night before was a distant nightmare, every second another miracle. She leaned back when he pulled the shirt over her head, then bent her head and nuzzled against his cheek, her legs tight around his waist. He pulled her closer, his breath hot against her cheek, and she closed her eyes when he kissed her again, long and lingering, his hand resting against her knee. He rolled over with her and Mollie whined at the edge of the bed and Nancy opened her eyes to see her fiancé's face above hers, his face softened into familiar lines, but his eyes, she could still read the fear and grief there, and she cupped his chin in her hand, her eyelashes fluttering when he turned his head and pressed a kiss into her palm.

"You know I'd never leave you."

He nodded, bending his face to hers, and she was breathless after his kiss, about to whisper to him to shut Mollie outside, when they both heard the distant ring of his cell phone from the other room. She recognized the ringtone immediately, and she sighed at the look of resignation on his face.

"Don't go," she murmured, wrapping her arms and pulling him down to her, but with another brief kiss he extracted himself, and Nancy pulled the sheet up over her bare chest, waiting. Three minutes and a whispered conversation later, and he was back again, heading into the closet.

"What is it, baby?"

"They just need me to do some paperwork."

Nancy snuggled under the covers, waiting for him to emerge. "So it can wait."

Ned came out wearing a pair of faded jeans, pulling a t-shirt on, shaking his head. "Can't wait. Captain wants me down there, have to fill out some forms before I can go on administrative leave." He slid up onto the bed again, on his knees, and cupped her cheek in his hand, leaning down to give her a long, sweet kiss. "I'll be back, and we can finish this," he said, his voice low and rough, and she could only run her hand through his hair before he was gone.

Nancy sighed and reached over for the t-shirt Ned had slipped off her ten minutes before, and tugged it back on, then slid out of bed and onto the floor. Mollie had returned from watching Ned go, and Nancy put her arms around the dog, giving her a brief hug.

"One day," she whispered into Mollie's side, "one day he won't leave anymore."


End file.
